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THE GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


BOOKS FOR GIRLS 
By AMY BELL MARLOWE 

l2mo. Cloth. Illustrated. Price per volume, 
6o cents, postpaid 

THE OLDEST OF FOUR 

Or Natalie’s Way Out 
THE GIRLS OF HILLCREST FARM 
Or the Secret of the Rocks 
A LITTLE MISS NOBOBY 

OrWith the Girls of PinewoodHall 
THE GIRL FROM SUNSET RANCH 
Or Alone in a Great City 
WYN’S CAMPING DAYS 

Or The Outing of Go-Ahead Club 
FRANCES OF THE RANGES 

Or The Old Ranchman’s Treasure 
THE GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 
Or Beth Baldwin’s Resolve 

GROSSET & DUNLAP 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



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SHAME! SHAME!" CRIED A DOZEN \'OICES. 

Frontispiece (.Page ISO) 




THE GIRLS OF 
RIVERCLIFF 
SCHOOL 

OR 

BETH BALDWIN’S RESOLVE 

BY 

AMY BELL MARLOWE 

M 

AUTHOR OF 

A LITTLE MISS NOBODY, THE GIRLS OF. 
HILLCREST FARM, ETC. 


Illustrated 


NEW YORK 

GROSSET & DUNLAP 

PUBLISHERS 


Copyright, 1916, by 
GROSSET & DUNLAP 


The Girls of Rinjercliff School 



SEP 30 1916 


©CI,A43792G 

"MJO / , 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

1 . “The Grapes that Hang 

High” i 

II. Larry’s “Coming-Out” Party ii 

III. Great-Grandmother Lomis’ 

Corals 23 

IV. The Sacrifice 32 

V. The “Water Wagtail” ■ . . 40 

VI. An Adventure in Midstream 48 

VII. Cynthia Fogg 61 

VIII. Queer Talk 68 

IX. Rivercliff Landing ... 74 

X. A New World 91 

XI. “The Glass of Fashion” . 102 

XII. Finding Her Place . . . m 

XIII. The Sunny Side .... 123 

XIV. A Great Deal TO Learn . . 133 

XV. The Red Masque . * . . 142 

XVI. No Martyr’s Crown . . . 152 

XVII. Flint and Steel .... 162 

XVIII. Another Barrier . . . . 17 1 


vi 

CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 

XIX. 

Mr. Dennis Montague . . 

l8l 

XX. 

Something Unexpected . . 

I9I 

XXL 

The Burial of Friendship . 

204 

XXII. 

A Renewed Resolve . . . 

21 1 

XXIII. 

Suspicion Hovers .... 

225 

XXIV. 

The Traitor’s Blow . . . 

235 

XXV. 

Before the Judgment Seat 

242 

XXVI. 

Rounding Out Another 



Year 

249 

XXVII. 

The Ice Carnival .... 

258 

XXVIII. 

Miss Freylinghausen . . 

274 

XXIX. 

The “Perfect Number” in 



Aunts 

283 

XXX. 

Vocational 

301 


THE GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 
CHAPTER I 

^^THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH^' 

“Beth ! Beth Baldwin ! Oh, B. B. I Do, for 
pity’s sake, stop ! Do you expect me to chase you 
all over town such a hot day as this? It’s cruelty 
to animals to make me run in this awful sun,” and 
Mary Devine finally reached Elizabeth Baldwin’s 
side, and clung to her school friend’s arm, panting. 

“Cruelty to how many animals, Mary?” asked 
Beth, laughing. “Are you a whole menagerie? 
You remind me of our Marcus when he was a little 
fellow. There was a ‘cat concert’ in our backyard 
one night, and Marcus put his head out of the 
door to see the participants. 

“ ‘Oh, Mamma !’ he called, ‘there’s a million 
cats out here,’ and when mamma reproved him 
for exaggerating, he defended himself by saying: 
‘Well, anyway, there’s our old cat and another 
one!”’ 

Mary had regained her breath now, and giggled 
over Beth’s little story, but was not to be side- 

I 


2 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


tracked. She had something to tell. News was 
Mary Devine’s over-mastering passion. To know 
what went on all over Hudsonvale, and to dis- 
tribute her information generously, “free, gratis, 
for nothing,” was the height of her enjoyment. 

Mr. Baldwin said one evening, after Mary had 
been calling on Beth: “They did think some of 
starting a local paper here in Hudsonvale; but 
they heard of that Devine girl and gave it up. No 
need of a newspaper with her in town.” 

Now Mary gasped to her friend: 

“Oh, Beth! I’ve got something to tell you. 
You’d never guess 1” 

“That’s good of you, dear,” Beth said, her 
black eyes dancing. “I hate conundrums. Tell 
me. 

“Larry Haven has hired an office in the Hud- 
sonvale block.” 

“Why, Mary! that certainly is news,” Beth 
cried. “I never would have guessed that. Has 
he hung out his shingle?” 

“He’s going to,” declared Mary, who knew all 
about it, for her father was janitor of Hudson- 
vale’s one brick office building. “He’s taken the 
room next to Dr. Coldfoot’s, the dentist’s, suite. 
Larry told father that the screams of the dentist’s 
patients would not bother him, for he expected his 
clients would scream quite as loud when he sepa- 


‘‘THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH’’ 3 

rated them from their money,” and Mary gig- 
gled again. “And oh, Beth! he’s just as hand- 
some !” 

“Who is — Dr. Coldfoot?” asked her friend, 
innocently. 

“Goodness no ! You are well aware, Beth Bald- 
win, that I meant the village pride, Mr. Lawrence 
Haven, just returned from the law school with 
his sheepskin.” 

Beth laughed again. “I do hope he’ll be suc- 
cessful,” she said. “His father was a prominent 
lawyer, you know.” 

“Goodness ! / hope he can dance,” responded 
Mary. “There’s a great dearth of good dancers 
among the boys here in Hudsonvale. You know, 
Beth, at graduation last month we girls had to 
dance together at our party. Oh dear! I wish 
we were going to have it over again 1 What fun 1” 

“Larry Haven is no longer a boy,” Beth said 
slowly. 

Mary laughed. “Of course not. He’s an old 
man,” she said saucily. “He’s twenty-two.” 

“That is seven years our senior,” said Beth, re- 
flectively. 

^^Six, in my case, if you please,” said Mary, 
smartly. “And what’s six years in a boy? He 
could be a lawyer forty times over and I wouldn’t 
be afraid of him.” 


4 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“You have more assurance than most, Mary,” 
said Beth, smiling. “I don’t know that I shall 
dare even speak to Larry now.” 

“Humph! you and he used to be as ‘sticky’ on 
each other as two molasses cocoanut balls — ^you 
know you used. He was the white-headed little 
boy who used to pull you to school on his sled,” 
said Mary, airily. 

“But that was a long time ago,” said Beth, with 
laughter. “I haven’t seen Larry since last win- 
ter’s holidays — and then scarcely more than to 
wave my hand to him. He’s grown quite away 
froni us Hudsonvale girls and boys since his soph- 
omore year at college.” 

“My! how he did puff himself and walk turkey 
his first two years at college,” said the slangy 
Mary. “The only boy from Hudsonvale who ever 
went to a real, big school, I guess.” 

“But Larry wasn’t spoiled,” Beth hastened to 
say. “He’s so sweet-tempered.” 

“Oh! you know how sweet he is if anybody 
does,” chuckled Mary. “Well! I must turn off 
here. Where are you going, Beth?” 

“Just across town on an errand,” her friend 
said evasively; for it was the gossipy girl’s nature 
to repeat to the next person she talked with any- 
thing she had learned from her previous compan- 
ion, no matter how trivial. 


“THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH” 5 

“Not that I would mind if the whole town knew 
I was going to old Mrs. Crummit’s for a dozen 
fresh eggs,” thought Beth, with inward laughter. 
“But I do v/ish Mary Devine was not such a ‘Bab- 
bling Bess.’ ” 

The girl’s mind, however, was filled with 
thoughts springing from the bit of new''S her school 
friend had told her. She and Mary had but re- 
cently graduated from the high school. And Larry 
Haven, the only son of the widowed Mrs. Euphe- 
mia Haven, had recently returned to his home 
with his diploma as a lawyer. Beth knew he had 
already been admitted to the county bar. 

Beth’s mother and Euphemia Griswold had been 
bosom friends in girlhood. At first, after Euphe- 
mia Griswold had married Mr. Haven, the lead- 
ing lawyer of the county and a scion of one of the 
oldest, if not one of the wealthiest, families in the 
State, she and Priscilla Baldwin, who had married 
a foreman in the Locomotive Works, remained 
very good friends. 

The Haven baby carriage was often pushed 
along the pleasantly shaded walks of Hudsonvale 
side by side with the more plebian carriage con- 
taining the Baldwins’ first little one, who later had 
died. The two young women remained insepar- 
able friends for some years. 

Then had come the death of her first child, and 


6 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

for a long period of time after this Mrs. Baldwin 
mingled but little with her friends. This was 
followed by a long illness. But, after a few years, 
Beth, now the oldest of her brood, came to give 
the foreman’s wife a new and better interest in 
life. 

Meanwhile, her old-time chum had grown away 
from her. Mr. Haven had become a corporation 
lawyer and was fast growing rich. He and his 
family had always had entrance into the most ex- 
clusive society of the State. Had he not died sud- 
denly when Larry was ten years old, he might have 
been a national figure in politics. 

In dying, he had left Mrs. Euphemia Haven 
and her only child fairly well-to-do. The prop- 
erty had to be conserved with some shrewdness, 
perhaps; but the widow lived in one of the finest 
old houses in Hudsonvale, entertained well, and 
seemed to have everything her heart desired. 
Larry was given an excellent education; and it was 
understood that he was to follow in his father’s 
footsteps, for he must earn his own living now that 
he was of age, his mother having full rights in the 
property as long as she lived. 

Mrs. Haven was not a snob. Although now the 
acknowledged leader of such society as there was 
in Hudsonvale (which was really a sprawling 
river-town surrounding the Locomotive Works 


“THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH” 7 

and coal-tar Dye Factory), she had often come to 
see her old friend, Mrs. Baldwin, while Larry was 
still small. So it was that the soft-spoken, gentle 
boy, with the watchful gray eyes and firm mouth, 
came to be a companion of Beth Baldwin’s while 
she was little. 

He took her to school on her first day; and sat 
beside her and held her plump little hand for an 
hour, too, because she was afraid. He had drawn 
Beth to school on his sled, as Mary Devine said. 
Larry was as much at home in the Baldwin house 
when a child as he was in his own. Perhaps more 
at home, for there was more gaiety in the little 
cottage on Bemis Street, which soon began to be 
crowded with young life after Beth was born. 

There was Marcus, two years Beth’s junior; 
Ella, now a flyaway child of eleven; Prissy — 
named after her mother — as sweet and loving as 
a child could be; and Fred and Ferd, the twins, 
six years old. They had all looked on Larry 
Haven as almost an elder brother. 

For two years, however, as Beth had intimated 
to Mary Devine, Larry had not been much at the 
Baldwin home. Indeed, he had been in Hudson- 
vale but seldom. His summers had been spent in 
preparing for the law school, for he was very 
desirous to get ahead. His exceeding industry had 
brought results. He was a very young man, in- 


8 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


deed, to have succeeded in securing his diploma 
and entering upon public life as he now had. 

As Beth Baldwin went her way, these thoughts 
weaved through her mind. And, too, she compared 
her own lot to that of her whilom playmate and 
confidant. When Beth learned that Larry was to 
go to college and finally enter the law school, she 
had expressed her intention of getting the maxi- 
mum amount of education to be secured by a girl 
— and Larry had encouraged her to try for it. 

Beth had stood well in her classes all through 
her high-school course. She had graduated among 
the first ten pupils in the class. She possessed a 
deep longing to continue her course. But 

“There’s about as much chance of my going to 
Rivercliff as there is of my getting an aeroplane 
and soaring in it to the Heights of Parnassus,” 
Beth told herself, with a little laugh and a little 
sigh. She was not of a melancholy disposition, 
and even the seriousness of her desire to learn and 
to achieve, in her way, as much as Larry had 
achieved in his, could not make her gloomy. 

Mr. Baldwin earned three dollars and seventy- 
five cents a day as foreman of the erecting shop in 
the Hudsonvale Locomotive Works. The family 
had often “figured and refigured” that sum; but 
they could not make it come to more than twenty- 
two dollars and fifty cents a week. 


“THE GRAPES THAT HANG HIGH” 9 


Marcus, although but thirteen, was already talk- 
ing bravely about going to work. In another half 
year he could get his certificate and become an aid 
in the family’s support. 

“While I,” thought Beth, shaking her head, 
“am desirous of adding to its burdens for three 
years to come. But then — if I only could — I know 
I could pay them all back,” she sighed. 

It was Beth’s desire to take a normal and teach- 
er’s course in a very thorough boarding school up 
the river. Having a diploma from Rivercliff 
would enable her to obtain a certificate to teach 
in the State schools. That was her aim — to be 
self-supporting, as well as to obtain an education 
the equal of that Larry Haven had secured. 

She had surreptitiously dipped into Larry’s 
college textbooks when he was at home during his 
freshman and sophomore years, and she was sure 
that such studies were not beyond her compre- 
hension. 

“Dear me,” thought Beth, “the grapes that 
hang highest are always the sweetest. How am I 
ever going to get admission to Rivercliff School; 
or, once admitted, how am I to remain there the 
necessary three years? Dear me! if Larry ” 

Just then she looked up before crossing the 
street and gazed directly into the calm, rather 
proud face of Larry’s mother who, in her little 


10 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

electric runabout, was just drawing in to the oppo- 
site curb. 

Mrs. Euphemia Haven was tall, of good figure, 
with beautiful hair, beginning to be touched with 
gray, that her maid dressed more becomingly than 
was any other woman’s hair in Hudsonvale. She 
had a good complexion, with a tinge of natural 
pink in the cheeks and lips. Her teeth were even 
and white, without the defects of gold showing 
the handiwork of the dentist. She dressed ex- 
quisitely, Beth thought. 

Mrs. Haven drove her runabout with the as- 
surance of a boy. She had steady nerves, a cor- 
dial laugh, a smile that was charming, and knew 
always how to put one at his ease. She beckoned 
now to Beth as the latter crossed the street, cry- 
ing: 

“Elizabeth! Beth! Come here, please ! You 
are just the person I must see.” 


CHAPTER II 


larry's “coming out” party 

Mrs. Euphemia Haven was very careful in 
her choice of words. Not that her diction was 
better or worse than most people’s; but she was 
very exact in saying just what she meant to say. 

Instead of calling to Beth Baldwin that she 
“wished” to see her or “needed” to see her, she 
said “I must.” Behind that expression lay a rather 
sharp controversy between her son, Larry, and 
herself at the breakfast table that very morning. 
It was seldom that there was any friction at all 
between Mrs. Haven and her son, for she was a 
very indulgent mother and Larry was quite un- 
spoiled, despite every chance in the world for his 
having been so affected. 

She never interfered with his pleasures, seldom 
with his associates, and never balked his plans. 
He, on the other hand, never gave his mother a 
moment’s uneasiness, for she was assured that he 
was a Haven and would do nothing to smirch the 
family name. 

Mrs. Haven did not blame her son for having 

II 


12 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


been so friendly with the family on Bemis Street. 
She, herself, had loved Priscilla Lomis with all 
her rather narrow heart when they were young. 
That Priscilla had married a mechanic was her 
mistake; and Mrs. Euphemia had condoned that 
mistake for years. But now she had to think of 
her son’s future. There were some past associa- 
tions which she felt might better be ignored by 
him now that he was a man. The silly plans in 
her own and Priscilla Baldwin’s heads when they 
were young married women, each with a brand 
new baby to think of and talk about, Mrs. Haven 
long since had thought best forgotten. 

She feared, however, that Priscilla might have 
remembered. Of course, that first dear little girl 
baby of her old friend’s had died; but here was 
another girl born into the family of the me- 
chanic — 

“And goodness !” thought Mrs. Haven, as Beth 
Baldwin crossed the street and drew near at her 
call, “what a perfect little beauty she is growing to 
be!” 

Mrs. Euphemia Haven was one of those women 
who manage a lorgnette very well indeed. She 
caught it up now and looked at Beth through it — 
not because she really needed this aid to sight, 
but to cover a sudden slight confusion that she 
felt. 


LARRY’S “COMING OUT” PARTY 13 

“Mercy, Beth! how really pretty you have 
grown!” was her first audible comment. “And 
what a big girl ! The other day you were only 
a little thing and Larry was playing nurse-girl to 
you. I expect he remembers you now as the little 
black-eyed tot he used to be so devoted to.” 

“I presume so, Mrs. Haven,” replied Beth, 
composedly. 

‘Why, you must be through school,” went on 
Mrs. Haven. “Are you working or do you help 
your mother?” 

“It is work helping in a family of eight, Mrs. 
Haven,” laughed Beth. “I have finished high 
school. But I hope to go to a more advanced 
school in the fall.” 

“That will be rather difficult, will it not?” sug- 
gested Mrs. Haven, with raised eyebrows. 

Beth knew that it was an intimation that Mrs. 
Haven fully understood the Baldwin’s financial 
circumstances. It was not said unkindly; yet, 
somehow, Beth felt that it was antagonistic. Her 
pretty head came up and she looked rather proudly 
into the fine eyes of Larry’s mother. 

“Yes; it will be very difficult,” she admitted. 
“But I mean to get a better education if. I have to 
earn the money myself to pay my way through 
** school.” 

“Dear me !” said Mrs. Haven, smiling. “What 


14 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

a very determined girl! But — in your case, my 
dear — is an advanced education really worth 
while?” 

“I think it is,” and this time Beth flushed. She 
recognized the critical note in her questioner’s 
voice, and she knew what it meant. “Don’t you 
think it was worth while for Larry to go to col- 
lege?” 

“Oh!” ejaculated the startled lady. “He — he 
is a boy.” 

“And I am a girl,” Beth laughed. “But I think 
I have just as much ambition as any boy.” 

The lady laughed too, and said; 

“That brings me to the reason I had for hail- 
ing you, my dear. Now that Larry is home for 
good I want to give him a nice party. The young 
folk of Hudsonvale, I am afraid, have almost for- 
gotten him. And, too, he is ambitious to take his 
father’s place in the community as a lawyer. We 
must introduce him to the older generation like- 
wise. So, when we were talking it over this morn- 
ing, he remembered you and told me to be sure to 
invite ‘that little Baldwin girl.’ Why!” an8 Lar- 
ry’s mother laughed easily, as though she did not 
know she had conveyed a sting, “he will scarcely 
know you, you have grown so.” 

“How kind of him to remember me,” Beth said 
sweetly. 


LARRY’S “COMING OUT” PARTY 15 

“Oh, Larry has always looked upon you as a 
little sister, I fancy — having been denied any of 
his own. Now, you will come, of course? Next 
Tuesday evening. There will be dancing.” 

Mrs. Haven had managed to make Beth feel 
^hat she was being patronized; but the girl was 
too sensible to take offence. She believed Larry 
had really said that he wanted her at his party, 
and she would not disappoint her old playfellow. 

“I will surely come, Mrs. Haven. Thank you,” 
she said, as the lady’s car started. 

As Beth told her mother when she arrived home 
with the eggs, she had nothing but her graduation 
dress to wear to Larry’s “coming out” party, as 
Beth laughingly designated it, and that frock had 
been made with the view to its being her “best- 
Sunday-go-to-meeting” attire for two years to 
come. A new dress was an event in the Baldwin 
household. 

“It’s not just the thing for an evening party, 
Mamma,” she said cheerfully. “But we’ll make 
it do.” 

“I really would like to have you look your best 
when you go to Euphemia Haven’s,” Mrs. Bald- 
win answered. 

“Of course! I shall scrub my face real clean 
and comb all the tangles out of my hair. Mother 
mine,” laughed Beth. “Why strive to amaze Mrs. 


1 6 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Haven with my fine appearance more than any- 
body else?” 

“Why? Oh well! I want her to see what a 
very nice girl you are.” 

“Thank you, Mamma 1 She has already told 
me I am pretty,” and Beth made a little face at 
the thought of Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s patron- 
izing way. 

Nevertheless, Beth had a desire to look her best 
if she attended the “coming out” party. But she 
wished to astonish another person rather than the 
rather haughty Mrs. Euphemia Haven. 

That dress had to be thought about — and there 
were only four days before the date of the party. 
Beth was glad she had worn it only on graduation 
day. It would not be familiar to anybody but her 
classmates; and she fancied that if any of them 
were at Larry’s party they would be likely to ap- 
pear in their graduation dresses, too. For Hud- 
sonvale was not a very fashionable place. 

The frock in question was of a good quality 
of cream-colored poplin — then a very popular 
fabric. It had been made high in the neck, for 
low-cut frocks for day wear were not approved in 
Hudsonvale. Evening wear was different. Decol- 
lete was expected of any one who was invited to 
an evening party. 

For a girl of her age Beth Baldwin’s taste was 


LARRY’S “COMING OUT” PARTY 17 

admirable. Yet, because of her complexion, she 
could “carry off” oddities in style and colorings 
that scarcely any other girl in the village would 
have dared attempt. 

She was handy, too, with her needle, and she 
decided to make some changes and adapt her dress 
for evening wear. She removed the long sleeves, 
and her mother gave her the lace out of her own 
wedding gown — so long laid away in camphor — 
with which she fashioned a soft, full, puff-like 
sleeve which reached only half way to her elbow. 
After removing the collar and the vest of the 
frock, she filled in over the shoulders and across 
the bust with some of the same pretty lace. Be- 
tween the lace and the material of the dress she 
put beading, and in this she ran narrow cherry- 
colored ribbon. She put a rosette on each 
shoulder, a large one with streamers over her 
heart, other ribbons with very tiny rosettes to tie 
the puff-like sleeves, and made ready a sash of 
broad ribbon of the same hue. 

The effect might be a trifle bizarre; but it was 
very becoming, indeed, to Beth, and when she put 
on the frock Monday evening and “tried it out” 
on the family, they thought her charming. 

“Some class to you,” said the slangy Marcus. 
“Cricky! you’re the niftiest looking girl in the 
town — isn’t she, Pop?” 


1 8 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“She’s what her mother was over again,” said 
Mr. Baldwin, proudly, lowering his paper to 
“peck” at his pretty daughter’s cheek. 

“Oh, Mamma ! I don’t see why you didn’t have 
me a dark and delirious beauty,” groaned Ella, 
“instead of a washed-out, flaxen-haired, inconse- 
quential looking little dowdy! I hate to go any- 
where with our Beth; she makes me look like just 
nothing!* 

The family laughed at the flyaway’s plaint, and 
Ella added: 

“Anyway, I hope Beth will get married long 
before I get any beaux. I know I couldn’t keep 
’em a minute if they came here and saw Beth.” 

“Mercy, Ella !” gasped her mother. “What 
are you talking about — a child of eleven?” 

Mr. Baldwin laughed heartily. He usually did 
at his flaxen-haired daughter’s nonsense. But 
Ella added: 

“I don’t care. Mamma. It should be against 
the law for one sister to be so much prettier than 
the others. Poor little Prissy and me — why, we 
haven’t any chance at all!” 

“ ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ daughter,” 
quoted Mrs. Baldwin, contemplating her eldest 
child with her head on one side. 

“Oh, yes! that’s what Mr. Monkey said to the 
poor little Hippopotamus baby. He found little 



SHE SNAPPED THE BEAUTIFULLY CARVED NECKLACE 

AROUND BETH’S THROAT. Pase 21. 




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LARRY’S “COMING OUT” PARTY 19 

Hippo crying beside a still pool,” said the viva- 
cious Ella, “and asked him what the matter was. 

“ ‘Oh, nuffin,’ said the Hippo, ‘only I never saw 
myself in a mirror before !’ 

“And, of course, Mr. Monkey said just what 
you did now. Mamma. But poor little Hippo 
knew that he couldn’t act handsome enough in a 
thousand years to overcome the handicap of the 
awful looks Nature had given him.” 

Through the laughter of Mr. Baldwin and Mar- 
cus, Ferd, the blond twin, spoke up stoutly: 

“I don’t care if they do call me ‘Blondy.’ I 
wouldn’t be black, like Fred.” 

“I’m certainly glad I’m a bruin, like our Beth,” 
said his twin, loftily. 

“ ‘Bruin!’” 

“A bear that boy certainly is I” 

“Goodness, Frederick,” said Ella, amid the 
laughter of the family. “You mean brunette.” 

Fred did not take laughter kindly. “I know 
what I mean,” he growled. “I’m glad my com- 
plexion is like Beth’s.” 

“Goodness, it isn’t!” cried the flyaway sister, 
suddenly. “You haven’t washed your face since 
supper, Frederick Baldwin! Come out to the 
kitchen sink with me this very minute !” 

Mrs. Baldwin had left the room while this 
conversation was in progress. Now she returned 


20 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


with a little square box that the children seldom 
saw. It was usually locked away in the safe in 
the bedroom occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin. 

“Oh, Mamma I” gasped Beth, suspecting what 
was coming. 

“Hello, Mother!” said Mr. Baldwin, with 
twinkling eye. “Getting out the ‘family jewels?’ ” 

“Oh, Mamma I” shrieked Ella, racing in from 
the kitchen, dragging Fred with one hand and 
waving the washcloth in the other like a very limp 
banner. *^Not Great-grandmother Lomis* cor- 
als r 

Beth flushed and paled, her eyes shining like 
stars as she watched her mother unlock the little 
box with the key that always hung about her neck 
under her gown. Great-grandmother Lomis’ cor- 
als was the one heirloom that had been handed 
down to Mrs. Baldwin’s generation. They were 
as precious in the eyes of her daughters as the 
Queen of Sheba’s pearls. 

“You’re never going to let me wear those to 
Larry’s ‘coming out’ party?” Beth finally gasped. 

Her mother’s face was serious. “You are the 
eldest, my dear. The corals will be yours some 
day — yours to do with just what you please. 
Great-grandmother Lomis declared in her will that 
the corals should always be given to the eldest 
daughter, and from her to her eldest daughter. 


LARRY’S “COMING OUT” FARIT 21 


This is an entail that the male heirs have nothing 
to do with,” and she laughed. 

“They may be sold or otherwise disposed of 
for the benefit of the eldest daughter of each gen- 
eration. If Beth wants to wear them to Euphe- 
mia’s There!” 

She snapped the thin, beautifully carved, blood- 
red necklace around Beth’s throat. The deeper 
hue of the corals contrasted beautifully with the 
brighter ribbons, and against the dark loveliness 
of Beth’s skin the necklace had never shone to bet- 
ter advantage. 

There was a pin, too; and Mrs. Baldwin swiftly 
snipped off the big rosette at Beth’s bosom and 
caught the filmy lace together there ‘with the beau- 
tiful pin instead. 

The corals set off the girl’s beauty wonderfully. 
There was an alluring. Eastern quality to it that 
now, enhanced by the old-fashioned jewelry, made 
Beth seem more mature than she really was. 

Yet she was only a simple, sweet child, after 
all. She possessed a better figure than most girls 
of her age, and had a demure, self-possessed man- 
ner that might have led strangers to think her 
older than she was. In mind and heart, however, 
though thoughtful to a degree, Beth was a child. 

“That’s mighty scrumptious — that’s what I call 
it,” declared Marcus. 


22 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Perhaps Mr. Baldwin thought so too; for the 
next evening, when Beth was ready to start for 
the Haven house, a taxicab stopped at the door. 

“Papa Baldwin I What extravagance!” ex- 
claimed his wife. 

“It’s not considered quite the thing, I believe,” 
he said drily, “for a young lady to walk to a party 
wearing three or four hundred dollars’ worth of 
jewelry.” 

Not until then did Mrs. Baldwin wonder if she 
were doing wrong to allow Beth to wear the fam- 
ily heirloom. But it was too late to say no. Beth 
kissed her hand to the watching family from the 
taxicab — the man shut the door, and in a moment 
the machine rolled away from the little cottage on 
Bemis Street. 


CHAPTER III 


GREAT-GRANDMOTHER LOMIS' CORALS 

Beth Baldwin felt that this was really her 
first “grown up” party. She knew that few of the 
girls who had graduated with her from high 
school had been invited to the Haven house on this 
evening; and few of the younger guests would be 
brought to the door, she was likewise sure, in any 
vehicle. There were but four taxicabs in the town. 

Beth knew that to the very nicest parties in 
town most people went afoot, carrying their danc- 
ing slippers under their arms. But now the girl 
was set down before the Haven door, under an 
awning and on a well-worn strip of carpet, both 
of which led up to the wide-open and brilliantly 
lighted doorway of the mansion. 

The Haven place was a fine old house; there 
was none better for the purpose of entertaining 
in town. Almost the whole of the lower floor 
could be used for dancing. The broad stairway, 
bordered by potted plants, offered plenty of “nest- 
ling corners” for tired dancers; palms hid the rear 
of the reception hall where the musicians were sta- 
23 


24 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

tioned. Already, when Beth timidly entered, the 
lights, the moving couples, the tinkle of music, the 
murmur of voices, were quite confusing. 

She saw Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s stately figure 
just within the drawing-room doorway. A few 
couples swung in time to the music across the hall 
in the huge dining-room, from which all the fur- 
niture had been taken. There were people going 
up and down the stairway whom she had never 
even seen before. She had not stopped to think 
until now that, after all, Larry Haven lived in a 
world quite apart from the Baldwins. 

Her mother’s very good cravanette hid Beth’s 
frock from throat to slippers. She wore no head- 
covering save the waves of her pretty black hair. 
For Beth was one of those fortunate girls who 
possess soft looking, wavy hair, adaptable to any 
style of hair-dressing. 

She was directed to the dressing rooms above, 
and mounted the stairs. There a maid showed her 
to one of the large bedrooms, now set apart for 
the women to use as a dressing room. 

Five minutes later Beth descended the stairway. 
She saw at its foot a group of people looking up 
at her. Mrs. Haven was not one of them. In- 
deed, Beth thought she knew none of the group — 
at least, none of the women. 

She imagined that they were whispering about 


GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CORALS 25 

her. The suspicion heightened the color in her 
cheeks; but she could not afford to be panic- 
stricken now. Beyond Ihis group — wavering a lit- 
tle in her sight because Beth saw her through a 
mist — she knew Mrs. Haven stood. 

She stepped from the lower tread of the stair- 
way, and Who was this who met her, both 

hands outstretched, lips smiling, gray eyes danc- 
ing? Such a tall young man, strikingly handsome, 
Beth thought, in his evening clothes, his shock of 
straw-colored hair brushed back from his brow, 
giving him a remarkably wide-awake appearance. 

“Larry!” she said, almost in a whisper, giving 
him her hands. 

“You howling little beauty!” he responded, in 
a tone equally confidential. “Mother did not pre- 
pare me for this change. Goodness, Beth ! you’ve 
grown up !” 

“No, no. But you have,” she said, flutteringly. 

He laughed. Then he tucked Beth’s plump little 
hand under his arm and led her into the drawing- 
room. 

“Mater,” he said, for she chanced to be alone 
at the moment, “I introduce you to the ‘belle of 
the ball.’ What do you know about our little 
‘Saint Elizabeth ?’ Hasn’t she grown up ?” 

“Mercy, child!” murmured Mrs. Haven, and 
the lorgnette came into play to rescue her from ab- 


26 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


solute confusion. “I told you, Larry, how really 
pretty she had grown. In a few years, Beth, you 
will set the young men’s hearts aflame. Introduce 
her to some of the others — do, Larry. So she 
will not feel lonesome,” and the lady patted Beth’s 
arm with her lorgnette. 

“And your Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals. I 
always envied your mother those beauties,” said 
the matron. “But I had no idea Priscilla had kept 
them all these years.” 

“Why,” gasped Beth, finally stung to self-de- 
fense, “they are heirlooms !” 

“Oh — yes — of course,” Mrs. Haven said. “But 
it isn’t every one who can afford to keep heirlooms, 
you know.” 

Beth felt the sting in every word Larry’s mother 
uttered. She knew Mrs. Haven was antagonistic 
to her. Why ? 

“Do introduce her to some of the young folk, 
Larry,” his mother said impatiently. 

“Not till I’ve danced once with her myself. 
Mater,” said the young man, laughing. “I can 
see plainly that if I don’t take my chance to do so 
right now. I’m likely to have none. Our little 
Beth is going to cut a wide swath to-night.” 

“Mercy I” murmured his mother. “What are 
these children coming to?” 

“You must not treat me as though I were grown 


GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CORALS 27 

up, Larry,” Beth said, laughing, as the orchestra 
struck up again. 

“Know this?” he asked quickly. 

“Oh, yes,” said Beth, glad she had learned some 
of the new steps. 

“Then come on — and tell me all about yourself 
while we dance,” Larry rejoined. 

“Oh no! You are the interesting subject just 
now. Think! a full-fledged lawyer,” she told him. 

“Yes — ‘full-fledged,’ indeed,” he agreed. “And 
likely to get well plucked the first time I appear 
in court.” 

“Does the thought of your first case scare you ?” 
she asked roguishly. 

“No. The fear that there won’t be a first case 
is what is troubling me. They tell me fledgling 
lawyers sometimes starve to death and are swept 
up with the dust in their offices and thrown out.” 

“I’ll have Mary Devine watch over you. Her 
father is janitor of the block, you know. If you 
are seen to become emaciated, we will try to smug- 
gle you in some food,” laughed Beth. 

“I don’t know how long I shall be at it,” the 
young man said, with more seriousness; “but I 
mean if possible to make the name of Haven 
known — and respected — as it used to be among 
the ‘legal lights.’ ” 

“Oh, I hope so, Larry!” she declared, with 


28 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


warmth. “We all at our house will ‘boost’ for 
you.” 

“And all the kids are well?” he asked, looking 
down at her with frank admiration. 

“Lovely. And fast growing up. You should 
see Ella I She is going to be a regular ash- 
blonde.” 

“I never did fancy light-complexioned people,” 
said Larry, laughing at her. “You suit me, Beth.” 

“ ‘Thank you kindly, sir, she said,’ ” returned 
Beth, courtesying. “But remember, please, that 
my mother considers me a child.” 

“Pooh! pooh! and a couple of fudges! You 
are a stunner, Beth.” 

“I am a school girl; you must not turn my head 
with compliments.” 

“Got through the high, Elizabeth?” he asked. 

“Yes.” 

“And going in for the higher ed, of course?” 

“Just as sure — as sure!” she said firmly. “I 
don’t know just how, yet; but I mean to go to 
Rivercliff in the autumn.” 

“Whew ! That’s some school. I met some girls 
at college who had been there. Co-eds, you know.” 

“Nice girls?” 

“Awfully nice,” he declared. “They took two 
years at Rivercliff after high and then came to 
college. “But the full course up there would put 


GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CORALS 29 

you ahead a whole lot, Beth. These girls I speak 
of were preparing for particular lines of work. 
If a girl wanted to be a teacher ” 

“That is my goal, Larry,” Beth interrupted, so 
earnestly that she missed her step. “I must be a 
teacher. You know — papa isn’t rich. We have 
to scrimp a good deal. If I could teach I could 
help a lot.” 

“Sure you could,” he agreed, with answering en- 
thusiasm. “And, besides, a girl doesn’t get any- 
where at all now if she hasn’t a pretty good edu- 
cation. You know how it is — a fellow likes to talk 
to a girl that can discuss the same things he can, 
and discuss them intelligently. Why, Beth,” and 
he laughed, “our great-grandmothers, who only 
knew how to sew and knit and bake and be domes- 
tic, would never get a chance to marry nowadays.” 

“What nonsense you talk,” said Beth, dimpling. 
“Papa says that the nearest way to a man’s heart 
is through his stomach. I fancy that not all young 
men of our generation are dyspeptic and have to 
live on predigested health foods.” 

“That is all right,” Larry said seriously. “But 
a fellow can hire a cook. He wants a wife who 
can be his mental companion.” 

“Good-ness me!” drawled Beth. “Hear the 
boy! When are you going to get married, Larry 
Haven? How soon?” 


'30 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Just as soon as I find the right girl,” he re- 
turned, laughing at her. 

“Do you expect her to starve to death In your 
law offices, too?” she demanded, quizzically. 

The question brought him to a stop. He gazed 
down at her for a moment. “Got me there, Eliza- 
beth — got me there,” he admitted. “I didn’t 
think of that. She will have to be supported — 
the future Mrs. Haven — won’t she?” 

“And a cook hired for her, too,” Beth re- 
sponded wickedly. “By the time you are able to 
do that, Larry Haven, on your Income as an attor- 
ney, I shall be principal of a young ladles’ semi- 
nary at five thousand a year.” 

He laughed delightedly. She was just as bright 
as he remembered her to have been when she was 
little. 

He handed her over to Major Whipple after 
this dance. The major, although a bachelor of 
over fifty, still possessed a discriminating eye for 
beauty. And he could dance well, too. Beth was 
enjoying herself. Larry did not let her sit idle a 
single dance. And the boys, young men, middle- 
aged men, were all ready to be partners with her. 

Larry said to his mother: “What did I tell you, 
Mater? Beth is the belle of the evening.” 

“You will turn that child’s head, Larry. I warn 
you,” his mother said seriously. 


GREAT-GRANDMOTHER’S CORALS 31 

“Well ! she talks a whole lot more sensibly than 
most of the young women I have talked with this 
evening,” he declared. 

“Ah I she is wiser than I thought,” murmured 
Mrs. Haven. “And I would like to own those 
corals of her Great-grandmother Lomis.” 


CHAPTER IV 


THE SACRIFICE 

“But why did she try to make me appear so 
young?” Beth asked her mother, as they sat side 
by side busily sewing the afternoon following Lar- 
ry’s party. “Really, I felt hurt. I cannot under- 
stand Mrs. Haven.” 

Mrs. Baldwin looked at her eldest daughter 
thoughtfully — as though, however, her mind were 
a great way off. 

“Why did she. Mother?” repeated Beth. 

“I can understand Euphemia,” said Mrs. Bald- 
win, quietly. “You must not mind her, my dear.” 

“But I cannot see why she wants me to seem 
childish, even if you do. Mother mine,” the girl 
said, somewhat impatiently. 

“I fear one meaning is, that Euphemia feels 
that Larry would better remember you only as his 
playfellow when he, too, was a child,” Mrs. Bald- 
win said. “He is a man now, you know, and 
must have a man’s feelings as he has a man’s duties 
to perform.” 

“Why, what nonsense. Mother!” exclaimed the 
32 


THE SACRIFICE 


3J 


girl, throwing back her head and laughing de- 
lightedly. “He is only a great, big boy — that’s 
all Larry Haven is.” 

Mrs. Baldwin shook her head, gravely. “You 
do not understand the difference between fifteen 
and twenty-two,” she said. 

“Yes, Ma’am, I do,” the girl responded smartly. 
“I know my arithmetic. It’s seven years — just 
seven years. Mother mine.” 

“That is not the real difference, Beth,” her 
mother pursued. “The difference is not to be 
measured by time ” 

“No I One would think it were eternity to 
hear you,” laughed Beth. 

Her mother laughed too; yet she was more 
serious than Beth could see any occasion for. 

“There is a freshness and a boyishness about 
young men — and some men when they become 
older — that make them seem less mature than 
quite young girls,” Mrs. Baldwin said, finding it 
a little difficult to impress her daughter with the 
change in her whilom playmate. 

“Larry Haven has stepped over the line from 
boyhood to manhood, whether you realize it or 
not, Beth. There is a vast difference now between 
you two. You look forward to study and the ac- 
quirement of text-book knowledge ” 

“Oh! how much!” murmured Beth. 


34 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“While he looks back upon his school course. 
The difference between knowledge wished for, 
and knowledge attained, is vast. It isn’t measured 
by mere time, as I said before. It is a difference 
in the attitude of one’s mind toward most things 
in the world. However much Larry may seem 
just the same as he used to be, he is not the same. 
He is a man grown, and you are only a girl.” 

“Oh, Mamma! That is a sharp one,” said 
Beth, laughing placidly. “I really can’t see that 
being fifteen instead of twenty-two makes much 
difference between Larry and me. I can still make 
him say just the thing I want him to say — I always 
could. And I can still get the best of him in an 
argument.” 

Mrs. Baldwin had to laugh, although it was not 
a very cheerful laugh. “Your being able to argue 
did not come from your studies in school, child, 
that is sure. You have always been good at that. 
You would argue now that you and Larry were 
equal.” 

“Oh! I realize our inequality. Mamma,” Beth 
said sadly. “It’s the difference in our education, 
not our ages, that troubles me. He may be only 
a boy, but he’s got something in his head that I 
haven’t. And oh. Mamma ! I want it so !” 

“My dear girl!” 

“I know. It is wicked, but I must say it. I 


THE SACRIFICE 


35 

told Larry last night that I meant to go to River- 
cliff this September. And I mean to ! It seems to 
me that I would sacrifice almost anything for the 
chance to go there. I must go !” 

“My dear!” 

“Yes. It sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? I just 
get desperate when I think of how badly I want 
to learn. And if I don’t become a teacher, what is 
to become of me ? Am I to go into the dye factory 
to earn my living? Dear Mother! I must earn 
my living somehow. The children are getting 
bigger, and need more and more. They must be 
educated, too. If I could get my teacher’s certifi- 
cate in three years I could help you all.” 

“I know — I know, child,” said her mother. 
“You would help us if you could.” 

“Now I’ve made you cry! I’m so sorry! Do 
forgive me! But it isn’t that I would help the 
family if I could. It is that I must! Don’t you 
see it. Mamma? Papa is getting no younger. 
Already Marcus talks of going to work. Am I 
better than my brother? The family needs my 
help as much as it needs his. And I should be able 
to do more than he.” 

“But, my dear ” cried Mrs. Baldwin, sur- 

prised by the girl’s earnestness. She began to 
doubt if her daughter was quite as childish as she 
had supposed. 


36 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

‘‘At least,” went on Beth, ignoring her mother’s 
half-spoken protest, “you must let me go to work 
this summer to see if I can earn enough, somehow, 
to pay for my first half, if no more, at Rivercliff.” 

“And what after that, daughter?” asked Mrs. 
Baldwin. 

“I don’t know. I am reckless — or inspired!” 
and Beth laughed shakingly. “A way may be 
opened. I’ll take a chance.” 

“Where can you get work for the summer?” 
her mother asked gravely. 

“Well — I would go into the factory for a short 
time ” 

“Oh, no! what would Larry say? You cannot 
do that,” her mother cried, with an energy that 
quite surprised Beth. 

“Indeed!” sniffed the girl. “I guess you mean, 
what would Larry’s mother say? I am not be- 
holden to Mrs. Haven.” 

“No,” said Mrs. Baldwin, seriously. “But you 
would not wish to offend Larry’s mother.” 

Beth showed herself puzzled. “Why, not de- 
liberately,” she said. “Of course not. Nor 
Larry either. But why worry about them more 
than our other friends? Lots of folks who know 
us, and in no better circumstances than we are, 
either, will turn up their noses at me if I go to 
work in the dye factory. But you know how it is, 


THE SACRIFICE 


37 

Mamma. A position in a store or an office is 
awfully hard to find in Hudsonvale. You wouldn’t 
want me to go to a summer hotel to be a waitress 
or a chambermaid?” 

“Mercy me, Beth ! What are you thinking of ?” 
almost screamed Mrs. Baldwin. 

“I’m thinking of making money to pay for my 
schooling at Rivercliff,” laughed her daughter. 
“I’ve read of lots of girls who earn their tuition 
fees by doing those things.” 

“But you!” 

“Who am I?” asked Beth. “Better than other 
girls? You’ve taught me to sweep, to dust, to 
make beds, and to be tidy.” 

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Baldwin hastened to say. 
“Every girl should learn the domestic duties.” 

Beth began to giggle at that. “Larry says not. 
He’s going to hire a cook when he gets married. 
He forgets that the cook may leave suddenly. I 
believe they have a way of doing that.” 

“For goodness’ sake!” gasped her mother. 
“What didn’t you and Larry talk about last 
night?” 

“Why — lots of things. We didn’t have much 
time to really talk. We’ll wait till he comes here 
to see us to have a really old-fashioned confab to- 
gether,” Beth said laughing. “But he’s a funny 


38 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“I tell you he is a boy no longer,” Mrs. Baldwin 
said, a little worried. 

“Oh, wait till you see him. He’s just the same 
old sixpence of a Larry. You’ll see. Mamma. 
But he is handsome in his dress suit. Doesn’t look 
at all like an undertaker.” 

Mrs. Baldwin, shaking her head, rejoined: 

“For you to go to work at any domestic service 
is out of the question. And your father would 
never hear to your working in the factory.” 

“What shall I do then. Mamma? Peddle? Be 
an agent? Go from house to house and try to 
make people buy what they don’t want and don’t 
need and really would be better off without?” and 
Beth laughed gaily. “Or shall I go right out with 
a mask and a club and become a highway robber?” 

Her mother had to laugh again at this sugges- 
tion. Really, Beth was practical in her ideas. 
“Much more so than most girls of her age,” 
thought the troubled mother, with a sigh. 

She could not but be impressed with the earnest- 
ness of Beth’s desire for an education. She had 
already had quite as much schooling as Mrs. Bald- 
win — and Mrs. Euphemia Haven — had been given 
when they were girls. 

“But the world is different now,” sighed the 
foreman’s wife. “And more is expected of girls. 
If Euphemia ” 


THE SACRIFICE 


39 

She did not finish her speech — there were some 
things she could not admit even to herself. But 
the next afternoon she dressed herself and went 
out. “Calling,” she told the curious girls. But 
she refused to say on whom she was to call. 

After a sleepless night Mrs. Baldwin had made 
up her mind that Beth should have her desire if 
it were possible. By a sacrifice that she could not 
bring herself to tell feven Mr. Baldwin about, she 
would raise sufficient money to pay for Beth’s first 
year at Rivercliff. She was quite sure Euphemia 
Haven would buy her Grandmother Lomis’ cor- 
als. For years she had wanted them. And Euphe- 
mia would give four hundred dollars for them. 

“It is Beth’s sacrifice, not mine,” the mother 
thought, wiping her eyes before she mounted the 
walk to the Haven mansion. “And it is to benefit 
Beth. I am sure the child would rather have a 
year at school than the jewelry.” 

She rang the bell and was admitted by the but- 
ler. 


CHAPTER V 


THE “water wagtail” 

“I OBTAINED the money from a friend. Pay- 
ment of the loan need not be considered until your 
education at Rivercliff is finished, Beth. This sum 
will carry you through your first year in comfort. 
Meanwhile, as you say yourself, a way may be 
opened for you to continue your course there. 
^Sufficient unto the day.’ Ask no questions.” 

Thus said Mrs. Baldwin, in family assembled, 
when the outcry was made regarding the suddenly 
and mysteriously acquired funds with which Beth 
was to storm the heights of Rivercliff School. 

Mr. Baldwin looked at his wife oddly, but he 
asked no question — then or at any subsequent 
time. When Mrs. Baldwin was as firm as she 
looked now, the others dared not be inquisitive. 

But as delighted as Beth was at the sudden open- 
ing of her prospects, she felt that a sacrifice of 
some kind had been made. She feared her mother 
and father had done some hard thing for which 
they might be troubled all through her school 
years. She had no suspicion of the truth — not 
for a moment. 


40 


THE “WATER WAGTAIL” 


41 


“But I will learn from other girls at school how 
to earn money to pay my way. And I’ll pay 
mamma back, too,” Beth thought, with but faint 
appreciation, after all, of how huge a sum four 
hundred dollars Is, and how long It would take 
to earn and save It in any way open to a girl of 
fifteen. 

Of course, the whole of it did not have to go 
for tuition and board. There would be a small 
sum for what Ella called her older sister’s “trous- 
seau,” and for pocket-money and incidentals. 
Rivercliff was a more expensive school than one 
or two others Beth had thought of and she wished 
she could gain the advantages she craved in some 
other institution. 

However, a girl with a diploma from Rivercliff 
had a distinct advantage over applicants from 
other schools with the State Board of Education. 
And for good reason. Rivercliff was more than 
a preparatory school in the usual acceptation of 
the term. A girl who faithfully took the courses 
laid down by Miss Hammersly, the principal, was 
well fitted for most places in life. 

The s .mmer was not spent idly by Beth. She 
had not merely resolved to obtain an education at 
her parents’ expense. She was ready and willing 
to do all in her power to help bring the much de- 
sired thing to pass. 


42 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

She obtained the opportunity of posing on sev- 
eral occasions for an illustrator for the magazines, 
who came each summer to a rustic studio she had 
built near Hudsonvale. Beth had done this work 
before, and the artist paid her fifty cents an hour. 
It was not an easily won fifty cents by any means. 
Retaining the poses as was desired strained the 
muscles and tired the mind more than most other 
work Beth had ever done. 

She could crochet, too ; but the payment she re- 
ceived for a baby’s bootees ‘‘a fly would starve to 
death on,” Ella declared — and with some appar- 
ent truth. However, Beth kept busy and happy. 
That is, she told herself she was quite, quite 
happy. But there was one thing that troubled her 
mind in secret. Larry Haven had never come to 
the little cottage on Bemis Street to see her. 

From Mary Devine Beth heard much about 
Larry. He had established himself in the office 
next to Dr. Coldfoot, and 

“Such scrumptious furniture, Beth, you never 
did see. They say his mother made him a present 
of it all — furnished his office right up to the min- 
ute. And he’s got a very splendid sign,” added 
Mary, with enthusiasm. 

Beth had seen the sign. 

“And he comes downtown as brisk as a drug 
clerk every morning,” giggled Mary, “and shuts 


THE “WATER WAGTAIL’ 


himself into that office — oh, dreadfully busy, he 
is!” 

“I hope he will be,” said Beth, laughing. 

Nobody said anything to her about Larry’s not 
coming to the house. The children were all busy, 
and had become so used to his absence that they 
did not note its continuance after Larry returned 
from the law school. 

That her old playmate was busy might be an 
excuse for his seldom calling; but there was abso- 
lutely no excuse, that Beth could imagine, for his 
never coming to see them. After the first fort- 
night following his party, Beth ceased to mention 
Larry in the family’s hearing. She was a girl who 
could hide her deeper feelings if she so chose; 
and she chose now to lead her mother to believe 
that thought of Larry never troubled her mind. 

However, it did. More than once tears wet 
her pillow at night while she lay and wondered 
why Larry had forsaken her. She did not believe 
it could be the seven years’ difference in their 
ages. 

“I don’t care if he does think me a little girl,” 
she told herself; “he might, at least, be polite.” 

But, in truth, she laid the defection of Larry 
Haven to his mother. The why of this was no 
more clear to her girlish mind than Larry’s neg- 
lect; but she had felt Mrs. Haven’s antagonism so 


44 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

deeply that she could not fail to take it into con- 
sideration now. 

Beth was one of those loyal souls who seldom 
make friends save after due consideration, and 
who cling to their friendships, once made, through 
fair weather and foul. She felt about Larry just 
as she would have felt about an older brother. 
He was just as necessary to her complete happi- 
ness as Marcus was. 

After their intimate talk at the party, Beth felt 
that her mind and Larry’s were a good deal in ac- 
cord — especially on the question of the advance- 
ment of her schooling. So she hoped he would 
continue to show his interest in the wonderful (to 
her) prospect of Rivercliff. She had no assur- 
ance that Larry even knew she was surely going 
to school until the afternoon came for her depart- 
ure from Hudsonvale. 

It was an event, indeed, for one of the Bald- 
wins to go away by the river boat. The Water 
Wagtail was one of the finest of the fleet plying 
up and down the Nessing River, and Mr. Baldwin 
had obtained for Beth one of the staterooms for 
the trip. 

The county paper, which ran a page of Hud- 
sonvale news (“in spite of Mary Devine,” Mr. 
Baldwin said), had printed a note of Beth’s pro- 
posed departure for school, and the date. Was 


THE “WATER WAGTAIL” 


45 

that how Larry knew ? For when Beth went down 
to the dock and aboard the Water W agtail, the 
steward had just taken a box of cut flowers to her 
stateroom. 

“I declare for’t, Missy,” said the shining-faced 
negro, “yo’ friend suttenly has sent yo’ a heap o’ 
posies.” 

“Let me see the card, steward,” she said 
quickly. 

It was Larry’s, and Beth knew that flowers like 
these grew only in his mother’s garden — in Hud- 
sonvale, at least. 

Her family had trooped aboard after her — 
with Mary Devine and a dozen other girls who 
had been Beth’s friends at the high school. They 
made a noisy and jolly party. And how they won- 
dered and exclaimed over the flower-filled state- 
room. 

“Why I” cried Mary Devine, “it’s just like a 
bridal tour you’re starting on. Aren’t you lucky, 
B. B.?” 

“I surely am,” admitted Beth, smiling. 

“But where’s the groom?” asked one of the 
other girls, slily. “Did he send the flowers?” 

“How ridiculous!” rejoined Mary, scornfully. 
“It’s the best man who sends the flowers, not the 
groom. He has to help smell ’em I” 

The party remained on deck while the freight 


46 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

was being run aboard below. Beth’s glance often 
swept the littered dock as she talked gaily to her 
friends or to the children or to her mother and 
father. Suddenly her eyes fixed their gaze upon a 
tall figure striding down to the dock from Water 
Street. 

It was Larry. Beth’s heart leaped and the color 
came and went in her cheeks. Had there not been 
so much going on, her excitement must have been 
noticed. As it happened, however, not even the 
girls chanced to see Larry till he was aboard the 
boat and was approaching the group. 

By that time Beth had quite regained her self- 
control. She welcomed Larry with just the de- 
gree of warmth her mother displayed — by no 
means as joyfully as did Mary Devine. He had 
to be introduced to the other girls — re-introduced 
in some cases. With Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin he 
was delightfully cordial. The children — even the 
twins — welcomed Larry nicely. Nothing was said 
about his previous neglect. 

When the warning whistle sounded and the 
party arose to leave, Larry manoeuvered to get 
Beth by herself for a moment. They took the 
outer deck on one side of the glass-enclosed cabin, 
while the rest of the party went the other way to 
the stair-well. 

“Go to it, Beth. I glory in your resolve,” 


THE “WATER WAGTAIL’’ 47 

Larry said, in reference to her plunge into board- 
ing-school life. “Get all there is for you at 
Riverclilf.” 

“I mean to, Larry,” she said composedly. “And 
thank you for the flowers — they are beautiful.” 

“Oh, they were the Mater’s idea,” he said hur- 
riedly. “But I have something here ” 

He fumbled in his pocket and brought forth a 
little box — a jeweler’s box, Beth knew. 

“You won’t want to wear those jolly old corals 
that belonged to your Great-grandmother Lomis 
at every party you go to up there,” Larry said, 
more boyish in his confusion than ever, Beth 
thought. “Here’s something you can wear right 
along — to remember me by.” 

He thrust the box into her hand. The children 
came racing to join them. Beth hid the box 
quickly in her bag — she knew not why. 

She pressed Larry’s hand in farewell. She 
kissed her mother, her father, and “all the tribe,” 
as Ella called the family. The girls waved their 
handkerchiefs from the shore. 

Larry did not wait as the Water Wagtail 
pulled out into the stream. It was his tall form, 
however, striding up the dock when the steam- 
boat was really under way that Beth last saw. 


CHAPTER VI 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 

Beth had left the door of her stateroom wide 
open. When she went into the passage out of 
which it opened, she saw a girl looking in at the 
flowers, admiringly. 

She was a merry-eyed girl, with short, fine, 
brown hair that had been blown about her face 
by the fresh, river breeze. This fact made her 
seem a little untidy; but she had a winning smile, 
was well dressed, and Beth found herself inter- 
ested in the stranger even before the merry one 
spoke. 

“How jolly!” she cried. “You certainly must 
have heaps and heaps of friends.” 

“Why so?” asked Beth, demurely. 

“Because they’ve just about filled your room 
with flowers. Or were they so glad to see you go 
that they over-speeded the parting guest?” added 
the girl, roguishly. 

Beth laughed as she went by the other into the 
room and seized a bunch of roses. “Here,” she 
said, thrusting the flowers into the strange girl’s 
48 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 49 

hands. “I must divide with somebody. And my 
friends were not speeding the parting guest. I am 
going to school.” 

“Bless us I so am I,” said the other, burying her 
rather retrousse nose in the fragrant blossoms. 
“But they didn’t waste any lovely flowers on poor 
little Molly — nay, nay, Pauline!” 

“My name is not ‘Pauline,’ ” interposed Beth, 
her eyes dancing. “It’s Beth.” 

“Oh, how jolly!” cried the other. “I never 
knew a girl named Beth outside of a story-book.” 

“It’s my real name,” Beth said demurely. 

“And are you going to school?” 

“Yes.” 

“Not to Rivercliff?” 

“Yes; I am,” Beth said, her own eagerness in- 
creasing. “Are you?” 

“How jolly!” ejaculated this rather exclama- 
tory girl. “I certainly am going to Miss ‘Am- 
mersly’s hestablishment, as it would have been 
called in ‘dear hold Hengland,’ had she remained 
there to conduct her school.” 

“Oh! is the principal English?” asked Beth. 

“The nicest kind. And Madam Hammersly! 
Wait till you see her! She wears the cunningest 
caps.” 

“Who is she?” asked the puzzled Beth. 

“Miss Hammersly’s mother. And such a dear I 


50 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

She is really the housekeeper and general mana- 
ger — and, oh! so particular! No end! But she’s 
a jolly old dear, at that.” 

Beth saw that this girl overworked at least one 
word in the English language. But it was impos- 
sible to look at her without thinking of that very 
word. She was jolly, indeed. 

Naturally, Beth Baldwin was greatly interested 
in this, the first of her future schoolmates whom 
she met and not a little curious about her. She 
learned at once that Molly Granger had been to 
Rivercliff for two years already, having entered 
what Miss Hammersly called the “primary de- 
partment.” 

“But I shall be a full-fledged first-grade with 
you ‘freshies’ this fall. I shall be in your classes,” 
she said cheerfully. “I believe I am going to like 
you a lot, Beth. And that’s more than I can say 
for some of the girls who have been with me as 
‘primes’ and now will be in our grade too. There’s 
Maude Grimshaw, for instance. That girl would 
try the patience of a Jobess.” 

“A whatf^ gasped Beth. 

“A Jobess. Female for Job. Isn’t that right?” 
asked Molly, her eyes dancing. 

Beth laughed. Then she said suddenly: 

“Oh, wait!” and, seizing some more of the 
flowers from Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s garden, she 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 51 

darted out of the stateroom. She had been watch- 
ing for several moments a girl who stood in plain 
view in the cabin and who had been staring at the 
flowers. 

She was a slim, freckled girl, rather oddly 
dressed, Beth thought; but her big, dark eyes ex- 
pressed a longing for the flowers that could not be 
mistaken. 

“You’ll have some, won’t you?” demanded 
Beth, offering the flowers to this stranger, as she 
had to Molly Granger. “I have so many of 
them I” 

Then she realized that the freckled girl’s eyes 
were blue. A shadow seemed to lift from them 
as she smiled. Whereas they had been dusky be- 
fore, they shone as she looked first at the flowers 
and then at Beth. 

“Oh, thank you!” she said, and her voice v/as 
delightfully gentle — “cultured,” Beth would have 
said, had that expression not so badly fitted the 
strange girl’s appearance. She wore a very odd 
combination of garments. 

Her smile and her speech repaid Beth for her 
act. The freckled-faced girl crossed the cabin — 
she walked gracefully — and sat down upon a divan 
with the flowers. Before Beth turned back to 
her new friend, Molly Granger, the blue eyes had 
become clouded again and the tall figure of the 


52 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

girl drooped over the handful of flowers. Beth 
whispered to Molly: 

wonder who she is?” 

“Haven’t the first idea,” said the jolly girl, 
carelessly. 

“Do you think she is going to school with us?” 
“To Rivercliff? I should say not!” gasped 
Molly. “Say! you don’t know what you’re up 
against there, Beth. Why, we girls of Rivercliff 
stand for the ‘acme of style.’ The only magazines 
we read are the fashion magazines — and we only 
look at the pictures in those. Maude Grimshaw 
could wear diamonds to each class recitation — 
and royal ermine, I presume, too — whatever that 

is, ” and Molly laughed. 

“Oh!” exclaimed Beth, greatly taken aback. 
“Only, you see. Miss Hammersly won’t have 

it. She is for plain frocks in school. What the 
girls wear in the evenings or on holidays does not 
so much bother her. We’re all supposed to be 
from families who roll in wealth — whatever that 
may mean,” and Molly giggled again. 

“Are — are youf^ asked Beth, somewhat tim- 
idly. 

“Am I what, my dear?” returned Molly. 

“From a rich family?” 

“Goodness, no ! My aunts send me to River- 
cliff. I’m a poor, lone orphan. My poor, dear 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 53 

mother must have taken one look at me, have seen 
what an awful, ugly little sprite I was, and thank- 
fully ceased to live. My father was a missionary 
and died of fever in Canton. There you have my 
history, saving that seven aunts — all my father’s 
sisters (do you wonder he went missionarying?) — 
took upon themselves the task of bringing up and 
educating ‘poor lil’ Molly.’ If I hadn’t a well 
developed sense of the ridiculous, it would have 
killed me long ago.” 

Molly rattled on so recklessly that Beth was 
more than a little startled at first. Then It began 
to Impress the girl from Hudsonvale that here 
was a person who had really never had a mother 
or a father, and had never learned the actual need 
of parents. Therefore, she could talk so indiffer- 
ently about them. 

Another thought was, however, buzzing in 
Beth’s brain. 

“What do you suppose these wealthy girls at 
Rivercllff will say to my dresses?” she asked. 
“I’ve only one better than this — and that’s for 
evening wear.” 

“Goodness ! How long is a string?” demanded 
the other girl. 

“What?” 

“How long Is a string?” repeated Molly, laugh- 
ing. “You might as well ask me that as to ask 


54 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

me how Maude Grimshaw and that tribe will look 
on you and your clothes. And I guess there’s no 
answer to that old wheeze.” 

“Oh, yes there is,” said Beth, laughing too. 
“My sister Ella says the answer is ‘from here to 
there.’ ” 

It did not take much to keep these two new 
friends laughing. And, at the moment, it did not 
seem a great trouble to Beth whether the wealthy 
girls at Rivercliff liked her and her clothes or not. 

She carried most of Larry’s donation of flow- 
ers out into the cabin and told the stewardess to 
arrange them on one of the writing tables. Then 
she locked her stateroom door and went with 
Molly on a tour of the boat. 

“You see. I’ve been up and down the river on 
this boat a dozen times,” said the jolly orphan. 
“I come from Hambro, ’way down the river. I 
started early this morning. We’ll get to the River- 
cliff landing to-morrow evening — if the freight 
traffic isn’t too heavy. The Water Wagtail stag- 
gers from one side to the other of the river, pick- 
ing up freight at the landings, and sometimes the 
trip is delayed long beyond sched. But never 
mind I school doesn’t really open till Monday. 
We’ve got three perfectly good days before us.” 

Twice Beth noticed the freckled girl as they 
passed through the cabin. She still sat in her 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 55 

melancholy attitude, and the flowers had dropped 
into her lap. Beth knew she must be in some 
trouble or sorrow; but she scarcely saw how she 
could help the stranger. 

Molly Granger kept up a running fire of com- 
ment upon everybody and everything. The steam- 
boat stopped at two small towns before dark, 
and the new chums watched the busy scenes on the 
docks and talked about the new faces they saw. 
Beth found Molly the very best of company; for 
while she was light-hearted and full of fun and 
mischief, she was sound at the root and had no un- 
kindness or meanness in her make-up. Indeed, 
Beth Baldwin had never met one of her own age 
before whom she liked so well on such short ac- 
quaintance. 

Left to herself for a short while, Beth was going 
over in her mind all the adventures of this busy 
and exciting day. How much had happened — 
and how much unexpected — since she had started 
from the little cottage on Bemis Street. 

Then, for the very first time since she had 
slipped it into her bag, Beth thought of Larry’s 
present. Something in a jeweler’s box ! How had 
she forgotten it for so long? 

‘‘That proves that this has been an exciting 
time,” murmured the girl, getting her bag and 
opening it. “Ah I here is the box.” 


S6 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

It was neatly wrapped and tied, and her fingers 
were engaged in untying the string for a minute 
or so. Then she opened the box. A puffy mass of 
pink cotton met her gaze. She pulled this aside. 

“Oh I 0-o-o-oh !” she breathed. “The beauty ! 
The beauty 

She took out the pin. It was delicately wrought 
of platinum and studded with diamond chips and 
tiny half-pearls. It was not very expensive; but 
it showed skilled workmanship and was an orna- 
ment that would surely attract attention. Yet it 
was simple enough to look well if worn by a young 
girl. 

Larry Haven’s taste could not be criticized. If 
he had selected the pin himself (and Beth believed 
he had, from what he had said at its presenta- 
tion), it showed that he thought of her — that he 
still considered Beth his little friend and comrade. 

Yet, if so, why had he neglected coming to the 
Bemis Street cottage all summer? This still puz- 
zled and troubled the girl. 

At supper time Beth and Molly went up to the 
saloon deck and the captain of the waiters found 
the two friends seats at a pleasant table. Beth 
looked for the freckled girl but did not see her. 
Yet Beth was sure she had not gone ashore at 
either of the landings. 

While the girls ate and enjoyed their supper, 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 57 

a mist arose and enfolded the steamboat and en- 
shrouded the face of the river. When they came 
out on the open deck again, the clammy breath 
of the mist fanned their cheeks, and all they could 
see of the banks on either hand were occasional 
twinkling lights — either on scattered farmsteads 
or in tiny villages or ferry-houses. 

“B-r-r-r-r I It’s going to be a nasty night,” said 
Molly Granger. “I shall go to bed early. No 
fun sitting up unless the moon shines. Then it is 
lovely to be out here and watch the shores. The 
old steamer won’t stop again till we reach Mar- 
bury — about midnight.” 

“I was hoping for a moonlit night,” said Beth, 
disappointedly. 

“Better to get a good sleep, for to-morrow will 
be a long day,” said Molly, showing a streak of 
good sense that Beth had not known she possessed. 
“We may not get to bed to-morrow night till late; 
for we may be delayed in reaching Rivercliff. I’ve 
been as late as eleven o’clock getting off this boat 
at that landing.” 

“I guess you know best, Molly,” agreed Beth. 

But she was not sleepy herself — not even when 
Molly bade her a warm good-night and went into 
her own stateroom, which was not far from Beth’s. 
The latter encircled the outer main deck again. 
The Water Wagtail was in midstream. She was 


58 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

a side-wheeler, and the splashing of her buckets 
and the creak of her walking-beam, added to the 
hiss! hiss! of the spray from overside, played an 
accompaniment to Beth’s thoughts. 

Her first night away from home! Never had 
she slept from under her parents’ roof before. 
Her own little room, shared with Ella, was the 
only chamber in which the girl had ever spent the 
night. 

Little wonder that she felt nervous, if not ap- 
prehensive. There were two berths in her room — 
an upper and lower. She would have been glad 
to share the stateroom with Molly Granger; but 
she shrank from admitting to even that easy-going, 
jolly chum that she felt the need of company at 
night. 

She shrank, too, from going to her stateroom 
and locking herself in. 

Instead, she wandered about the boat again. 
She spent more than two hours going from deck 
to deck — sitting a while in one place, then getting 
up and wandering about, wrapped well in her rain- 
coat to keep out the thick mist. 

Several times she saw the freckled-faced girl. 
Either she had no stateroom, or else, with Beth, 
she did not feel like going to it. And her expres- 
sion of countenance and deeply despondent man- 
ner troubled the girl from Hudsonvale. 


AN ADVENTURE IN MIDSTREAM 59 

“I wish I could do something for her,” thought 
Beth. “She must be poverty poor with that get- 
up. Dear me! I haven’t any too much money 
myself; but if a little would help her ” 

She finally started toward the strange girl, 
determined to accost her; but just then the latter 
arose from her seat and approached one of the 
uniformed officers of the boat, then just passing 
through the cabin. 

“Are we near Brakelock, yet?” Beth heard the 
girl ask. 

“We’re not far from that landing. Miss; but 
we stop there only on the down trip unless we’re 
signalled to take passengers. Nothing doing to- 
night, Miss.” 

“Thank you,” said the girl, quietly. 

The man went about his business. The girl 
immediately descended the stairs to the lower, or 
freight, deck. Beth, hesitating whether she should 
speak to her or not, followed unobserved. 

Nobody seemed to be about. The way was 
open aft to the outer deck behind the paddle- 
wheels. The tall girl went swiftly to the port 
side, slid open one of the doors, and stepped out 
upon the misty, open deck. Beth went out by an- 
other door. There was nobody aft but herself and 
that other girl — not another soul. 

The girl did not see Beth and the latter hesi- 


6o GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


tated again. What should she say to her? How 
accost her? 

And then — the discovery set Beth’s heart to 
beating madly — she saw that the strange girl was 
leaning far over the rail of this lower deck, so 
close below which the black water hissed and 
gurgled. In a moment she had a knee upon the 
flat top of the rail, flinging up her tight skirts with 
an impatient kick to free her limbs of their en- 
tanglement. 

She was teetering — almost head downward — 
on the rail, about — it seemed — to plunge into the 
swift current of the river 1 


CHAPTER VII 


CYNTHIA FOGG 

Beth had learned something about vigorous 
play at basket-ball under the direction of the in- 
structor in physical culture at the Hudsonvale high 
school. Besides, she had not played with Marcus 
and the other boys — even with Larry in years gone 
by — without learning what is meant by a low 
tackle. 

So, when she jumped for the girl who seemed 
about to throw herself into the river from the 
stern of the Water Wagtaily she “tackled low.” 
She seized the reckless girl about her knees, lock- 
ing her legs tightly in her arms. 

“You can’t ! I sha’n’t let you !” Beth gasped, as 
the other struggled. “Oh I what a wicked thing 
you are doing !” 

The freckled girl squealed — no other word 
could exactly express the startled sound she made 
when Beth seized her. Then she attempted to 
turn around and face her rescuer, as the latter 
dragged her down and away from the rail. 

“What are you doing? Stop it I” sputtered the 

6i 


62 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

tall girl. “Goodness ! how strong you are ! Do 
let me be !” 

“I won’t!” cried the excited Beth. “I won’t! 
You sha’n’t do such a dreadful thing! I’ll shout 
for help !” 

“Oh! don’t do that,” begged the other girl. 
“They’ll do something awful to me.” 

“Then promise you won’t do that ” 

“What?” 

“It would be dreadful ” 

“What would be dreadful?” repeated the 
strange girl, in some heat. “They’d have got the 
boat back again. I wasn’t going to steal it.” 

“Steal it?” murmured Beth, startled and con- 
fused. 

“Yes. I’d have left it tied along shore there. 
No harm would have come to it.” 

“Oh, my dear !” gasped Beth. “Is there a boat 
there?” 

“Of course there is. Didn’t you see it dragging 
just astern? They forgot to hoist it in. I noticed 
it before dark. Say!” exclaimed the other, her 
strange eyes suddenly shining in the mist as she 
stared at Beth. “What did you think I was trying 
to do when I was hauling in on that painter?” 

“I — I thought you wanted to drown yourself,” 
whispered the confused Beth. 

“My aunt!” exclaimed the girl, and laughed 


CYNTHIA FOGG 63 

shortly. “No. I’m not quite so desperate as all 
that.” 

“But you might fall overboard getting into that 
boat,” said Beth. 

“I can swim. But the current’s swift here in 
midstream,” and she shuddered. “Now you’ve 
knocked the courage all out of me. Oh, dear!” 

“Why do you want to leave the boat in such a 
crazy fashion?” demanded Beth, regaining her 
self-possession. 

“I’ve got to get away before the Water Wag- 
tail stops at Marbury,” said the other, hastily. 

“Why?” repeated Beth. 

“Oh — because 1 ” 

“But you wouldn’t dare take that boat. You 
might fall overboard from it. You would be lost 
in this fog,” Beth urged. 

“I know. I wouldn’t dare now,” said the other, 
gloomily. 

“If I hadn’t stopped you something dreadful 
might have happened.” 

“Nothing more dreadful than will happen when 
we reach Marbury.” 

“What do you mean?” asked the curious and 
sympathetic Beth. 

“They know I am on this boat,” confessed the 
girl, with sudden desperation. “And they’ll come 
aboard of her and take me back.” 


64 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Back where?” 

“I can’t tell you. It’s awful ! I haven’t a living 
soul I can call my own — not a real relative ” 

“You are an orphan?” asked Beth, thinking at 
once of an asylum or an institution to which she 
supposed poor girls without parents or relatives 
have to go. Besides, the awful clothing this girl 
wore bore out this supposition of Beth’s — that 
she had run away from a charitable establishment 
of some kind. 

“Of course. I’m an orphan,” said the other girl, 
quickly. 

“Can’t I help you?” suggested the sympathetic 
Beth. 

“How?” 

“What is your name, please?” asked Beth. 
“Mine is Beth Baldwin.” 

“Cynthia — Cynthia Fogg,” mumbled the other 
girl, and so hesitatingly that Beth naif believed 
that the last name, at least, was born of the thick 
river mist out into which the wonderful blue eyes 
were staring. Nevertheless, Beth said nothing to 
betray her doubt. 

“You say these — these people will search the 
boat for you ?” she asked. 

“Yes.” 

“People from the — the institution from which 
you have run away?” 


CYNTHIA FOGG 


65: 

Cynthia turned her head quickly so that Beth 
could no longer see her face, replying in a muf- 
fled tone: “Yes; from the institution.” 

“How do you know they are on board?” con- 
tinued the practical Beth. 

“Somebody that knows me saw me at that last 
landing — just as the steamboat was pulling out,” 
replied Cynthia. “I know he’ll telephone up the 
river to Marbury. And I’ll never get away from 
them now.” 

“You may escape them,” said Beth, kindly. 
When Cynthia looked back at the dragging boat, 
she added hastily: “Oh, not by that means. There 
must be a less perilous way.” 

Without any thought of the possible conse- 
quences, Beth had given her heart and hand to 
the strange girl’s cause. It meant little to her that 
this girl had run away from some public institu- 
tion. She dj,! not stop to ask why she had run 
away. 

“How, I’d like you to tell me?” said Cynthia. 

“Surely those who look for you will not arouse 
the passengers and make a disturbance in the mid- 
dle of the night? We don’t get to Marbury till 
midnight, I understand.” 

“That’s right.” 

“Then,” said the generous Beth, “why not come 
to my stateroom?” 


66 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


“Your’s? Why! you don’t know me,” said the 
other girl, rather astounded. 

“Surely, we’ve just introduced ourselves,” 
laughed Beth. “I am alone in my stateroom. 
There are two berths. They’ll never look for 
you there.” 

“Oh, my aunt!” ejaculated Cynthia Fogg, with 
such sudden animation, that her strange eyes 
sparkled again. “That would be great!” 

Beth thought the girl an odd combination of 
characteristics. One moment she was morose; 
the next she brightened up and was all life and 
gaiety. But the girl from Hudsonvale was bent 
only on helping Cynthia. 

“Will you come to my room?” she repeated. 

“Surely I will — if you think they’ll let me.” 

“Who?” 

“Why, the steamboat people,” said Cynthia. 

“I guess they won’t stop us. But we’d better 
not let anybody see us together. When the boat 
gets to Marbury, somebody may remember having 
seen you with me, and then they’ll suspect where 
you are hidden,” said the practical Beth. 

“My aunt! so they will,” admitted Cynthia. 

“So we’ll go singly. Don’t let the stewardess 
see you,” said Beth, warningly. “I’ll go first. 
You’ll surely follow?” 

“Of course I will,” said the other girl, warmly. 


CYNTHIA FOGG 67 

‘‘And no trying to go overboard — into a boat 
or not?” added Beth, smiling. 

“I’m afraid now,” confessed the other. “You’ve 
scared me.” 

“Then I’ll take care of you,” promised Beth, 
laughing again. 

“You are a nice little thing,” repeated Cynthia 
Fogg. 

“Thank you. My room is Number Fifty- 
three.” 

“I know,” said the other. “I saw those flow- 
ers. I’ll wait till you get there before I come up- 
stairs.” 

Beth re-entered the enclosed part of the boat 
and went up to the main deck at once. She had 
been in her stateroom ten minutes before she 
heard a quiet little rustle outside h^r door. She 
had left it unlocked, but now she turned the knob 
invitingly. 

The freckled girl pushed it open and glided in, 
closing it noiselessly behind her. 

“Here I am,” she said. 


CHAPTER VIII 


QUEER TALK 

The dress of this unfortunate in whose fate 
Beth had taken such a strong interest, had already 
made the girl from Hudsonvale wonder. Such 
a shocking combination of color and tawdry finery 
Beth had seldom seen, even in a mill village, which 
Hudsonvale was. 

Yet the tall, freckled girl wore the incongruous 
garments with utter unconsciousness. She never 
seemed to give her dress a thought. 

On a green straw hat of the season’s mode, was 
a purple feather, which had plainly seen service in 
the rain. She wore a ragged feather boa and a 
rather soiled brown silk waist much worn under 
the arms and evidently originally built for a much 
fuller figure. 

A black serge skirt of very narrow proportions 
seemed shrunk upon her, and was spotted and 
shiny. Low brown shoes and spats completed the 
costume. 

“I suppose these awful garments are better than 
the uniform of the institution she fled from,” 
68 


QUEER TALK 69 

thought Beth. Then she asked aloud: “What did 
you think of doing when you ran away?” 

Cynthia’s face blossomed into one of her un- 
expected smiles. “Just thinking of running away,” 
she said. 

“But how did you propose to live?” asked the 
practical Beth. 

“By drawing my breath — the same as usual,” 
and the strange girl went off into a spasm of 
laughter which Beth thought showed rather poor 
taste to say the least. 

“But we all must do something besides breath- 
ing to live,” she said shortly. 

“True,” said Cynthia. “Eat. And to eat we 
must have money, eh?” 

“Yes,” said Beth, still with gravity. 

“I intend to work,” said the older girl, com- 
posedly enough now. 

“What kind of work can you do?” 

Cynthia hesitated. She put her head on one 
side. Her eyes grew dark and unfathomable 
again. 

“I ought to get a job at housework, oughtn’t I ?” 
she said. 

“I don’t know,” said Beth, thoughtfully. 
“Wherever you apply for work you will have a 
better chance of obtaining it if you look — look a 
little more like other girls, don’t you think?” 


70 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“What?” questioned Cynthia, evidently puz- 
zled. 

“Why — your dress, I mean. Perhaps we can 
help you make your appearance nicer.” 

“You mean my clothes are ugly?” asked Cyn- 
thia, bluntly. 

“And not altogether clean,” added Beth, 
quietly. 

“Well, housemaids don’t have to dress very 
fancy, do they?” demanded the refugee. “I got 
these things I am wearing from a girl who worked 

as a maid and waitress, and I paid Well! I 

paid enough for them.” 

“Of course,” mused Beth, “you couldn’t risk 
going out on the street in your uniform.” 

“My what?” exclaimed Cynthia. 

“Why — uniform. Didn’t you all dress alike in 
that place where you were?” 

Cynthia turned her face from Beth suddenly. 
“Oh — yes,” she said. In a muffled tone. “I see. I 
just had to get different clothes.” 

“Well, maybe we can fix you up a little better.” 

“Who’s ‘we?’ ” demanded Cynthia, quickly and 
sharply. 

“There is a friend here who Is going to school 
too.” 

“Are you on your way to school?” asked Cyn- 
thia. 


QUEER TALK 71 

“Yes,” Beth replied. 

“What school?” 

“Rivercliff.” 

“And is that other girl I saw you with?” 

“Yes. We had just met. She is an awfully 
nice girl. Maybe she can help.” 

“What do you mean? To give me some of 
your clothes? Bless you, child!” and this strange 
girl laughed heartily. “Both of you are chunky 
and I am tall. Your clothes never would fit me 
in the world. I don’t want skirts half way to my 
knees. Make me look like a giraffe reaching for 
the highest branches of a cocoanut palm 1” 

She laughed again, and Beth joined her — but 
rather ruefully. To tell the truth, Beth thought 
her strangely particular for a poor girl — a run- 
away from an orphans’ home, or something of the 
kind. 

But she did not prolong the argument with her 
guest. Cynthia Fogg (if such was her name) was 
frankly yawning. 

“We will talk of it in the morning,” Beth said, 
with sympathy. “I see you are tired. You may 
take either berth ” 

“Oh! I could never climb into an upper,” 
gasped Cynthia. “If I have to sleep in such a 
place it has to be in the lower berth.” 

Evidently the runaway was used to taking the 


72 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

best there was to be had — ^whatever that best 
might be. She seemed quite careless of other 
people’s needs or desires. She took Beth’s kind- 
ness in offering her the choice of the berths quite 
as a matter of course. 

Naturally, there was not much room in the 
stateroom for two people. Cynthia seemed so 
tired that Beth sat back on a stool and allowed 
her to undress first. The girl from Hudsonvale 
could not help noticing that the stranger’s under- 
clothing was very good and spotlessly clean. 
These did not match her outside apparel in the 
least. Beth Baldwin could not help but think this 
strange. 

“Well, I didn’t suppose I’d be sleeping in a 
stateroom to-night,” said Cynthia, with a careless 
laugh, as she got into the wider lower berth. “I 
didn’t have much money left after I bought these 
clothes of that girl.” 

Beth wanted to ask how she had obtained money 
at all at the orphan asylum ; but she did not wish 
to appear too curious. Perhaps they allowed the 
girls there to earn money by outside work. Cyn- 
thia spoke as though she had been bred to domes- 
tic service. 

Beth, who was not unobservant, had looked 
more than once at the strange girl’s hands. They 
were white and soft, well kept, and slenderly 


QUEER TALK 73 

formed — not at all the hands of a girl who had 
dabbled in dish-water or used the mop and scrub- 
bing brush. Her clean-cut features, too, and her 
low, cultivated voice, certainly belied the thought 
that she had spent her life in domestic service. 

Beth began slowly to coil her hair for the night, 
having slipped out of her shirt waist. Cynthia 
blinked at her for a moment, yawned twice (show- 
ing very even, strong looking teeth, likewise per- 
fectly kept) and then — deep, even breathing from 
the lower berth warned the other girl that Cynthia 
was asleep. 


CHAPTER IX 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 

Beth was roused from her reverie by the 
mournful tooting of the Water WagtaiVs whistle 
for the landing at Marbury. Here Cynthia Fogg 
expected her pursuers would come aboard to 
search the boat for her; but she was a sound 
sleeper and did not arouse at all while the steamer 
was at the dock, discharging and receiving freight. 

Nor did Beth hear anything outside her state- 
room door that indicated a search of the passen- 
gers’ quarters for the runaway girl. Beth was a 
little worried, now she stopped to think of the 
matter more seriously. What would the authori- 
ties do to her if it was learned that she had hidden 
Cynthia away? 

She wondered about another thing, too. If 
Cynthia safely escaped her pursuers, what was to 
be done with her? Beth wondered whether or not 
she should take Molly Granger into the secret. 
She felt that she ought to advise with somebody, 
and Molly seemed the only person at hand. 

Yet she realized that the laughing, joking, care- 
74 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 


75 

less Molly might not be just the best sort of in- 
dividual to advise with in any important emer- 
gency. 

Somehow, Beth felt that Cynthia Fogg was one 
of those persons who are apt to trust implicitly in 
the suggestions or help of others rather than them- 
selves exert mind or body in an emergency. Hav- 
ing given herself into Beth’s hands, the runaway 
had gone to sleep as peacefully as a baby, leaving 
her hostess to think out her future course — if she 
would. 

The steamboat finally got under way again, and 
nobody disturbed the occupants of stateroom 
Number 53. Beth then undressed, said her pray- 
ers, put Larry’s present and her purse under her 
pillow, and climbed gingerly into bed, being care- 
ful not to awaken the slumbering Cynthia. 

She did not expect to sleep much, the situation 
being so strange and the day such an exciting one. 
But scarcely was her head comfortably settled on 
the pillow than she was off. 

One o’clock was a late hour for Beth Baldwin 
to be awake. Therefore, the early morning stir 
upon the boat — even its stopping at several small 
landings — did not arouse her. But a fist pounding 
vigorously on the door of Number 53 did finally 
awaken her. 

“Beth Baldwin! Beth Baldwin! For the sake 


76 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

of goodness! Do you die at night and have to 
be resurrected every morning?” 

“Is — is that you, Molly Granger?” yawned 
Beth. 

“It is. Get up!” 

“Isn’t it dreadfully early?” 

“No. It’s only cloudy. The day is broke, my 
child — dead broke, by the looks of it, I should 
say. A nasty day! and I so wanted it to be nice.” 

Beth had reached down and was fumbling at 
the key in the lock. Now she turned it and Molly 
bounced in. 

“Well ! you lazy girl !” cried Miss Granger, who 
was fully dressed. “You’ll learn to get up more 
promptly than this at Rivercliff. Miss Ham- 
mersly believes in early hours. So does the 
madam.” 

“I did not go to sleep till after the boat left 
Marbury,” said Beth, yawning frankly again. 

“Mercy! and I never even knew we stopped 
there,” laughed Molly. Then suddenly she ut- 
tered a suppressed shriek and fell back from the 
berths. 

“What’s the matter?” demanded the startled 
Beth, sitting up wildly and bumping her head. 

“What — what’s that?” asked the other girl, 
pointing. 

“Oh! Ow! Ouch!” groaned Beth, placing both 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 


77 

hands tenderly on her poor, bruised crown. 
“What is the matter with you, Molly Granger?” 

Then she remembered Cynthia Fogg and care- 
fully crept down from her berth. In the lower 
berth, the freckled runaway was wound up in the 
blanket like an Egyptian mummy in its wrappings, 
quite unconscious of what was going on about her. 

“For mercy’s sake I” repeated Molly. “Did 
that grow there in the night?” 

“Oh dear me, no !” gasped Beth, between laugh- 
ing and weeping, for the bump hurt. “That’s 
Cynthia.” 

“What?” 

“Cynthia Fogg.” 

“Goodness! Did you have her in your bag? 
Was that why I didn’t see her before?” asked 
Molly Granger. 

“Why — don’t you see? It’s the girl I gave 
flowers to. Don’t you remember?” 

Molly was staring wonderingly about the state- 
room. She spied the green hat and purple 
feather. 

“Cracky-me!” she sighed. “That dowdy?” 

“Sh!” began Beth, but Molly interrupted: 

“She’s dead, isn’t she? Nothing less than Ga- 
briel’s trump will wake her up. Tell me about it — 
do! A strange girl in your stateroom? I 
shouldn’t have thought you’d dare.” 


78 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Why — I never thought there was the least 
harm in her,” Beth said, wonderingly. “And she 
was in trouble.” 

“What sort of trouble?” 

In whispers Beth told Molly all about it. The 
jolly girl laughed when she heard how Beth 
thought the freckled girl was about to commit sui- 
cide; but she listened to the remainder of the story 
with some seriousness. 

“I don’t see how you dared do it,” repeated 
Molly. “To take her right into your stateroom I” 

“But she’s only a girl like ourselves.” 

“But from a public institution of some kind!” 

“Is that different from a boarding school?” de- 
manded Beth, with some warmth. “Only the girls, 
I suppose, are all poor and don’t have very much 
fun.” 

“Cracky-me !” exclaimed Molly again. “Maybe 
she’s from some place where they send really bad 
girls. Perhaps she’s escaped from a reform 
school.” 

“Nonsense!” laughed Beth. “She’s nicely 
spoken and is very ladylike. And has such won- 
derful eyes!” 

“I noticed those eyes last evening,” said Molly, 
reflectively. “And she is older than we are.” 

“Not much.” 

“Maybe she has been with people who are not 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 


79 

nice. To think of the risk you took, Beth Bald- 
win I And she admitted the authorities were after 
her.” 

“Yes.” ' 

“Suppose a policeman had come right here to 
this room and demanded her — and taken you to 
jail, too?” 

But Molly’s eyes twinkled, and Beth laughed 
again. “You can’t scare me, Molly Granger. I 
don’t believe there is a mite of harm in Cynthia 
Fogg.” 

“Well, what are you going to do with ‘Cynthia- 
of-the-minute?’ ” asked Molly. 

“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” 
said Beth, seriously. 

“With me? Goodness I Am I going to be in 
this?” 

“Of course. We’re chums, aren’t we?” laughed 
Beth, roguishly, as she drew on her stockings. 
“Sit down on the edge of the berth, Molly, and 
we’ll talk. I don’t think Cynthia means to wake 
up.” 

“She wouldn’t awaken if the upper berth fell 
down,” declared Molly Granger. “Well now! 
what is it, Beth Baldwin? I believe you are going 
to get me into trouble.” 

“Not a bit of it. But we both must help this 
poor girl.” 


go GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Why must we? I don’t like that word, any- 
way,” confessed Molly. 

“But if we can help folks in this world, we 
ought to, oughtn’t we?” 

“That is, if we find a convict, for instance, es- 
caping, we should aid him rather than the police?” 
giggled Molly. 

“Hush ! I tell you I have every confidence in 
Cynthia’s being a good girl. But she is a poor 
girl, and she needs some better looking clothes 
than those she has. And then, she needs work.” 

“What kind of work?” asked Molly, wide- 
eyed. “We couldn’t find her work to do.” 

“I don’t know whether we could or not. She 
speaks as though she were used to domestic ser- 
vice.” 

But Beth refrained from mentioning the fact 
that the appearance of Cynthia’s hands did not 
bear this out. 

“Might introduce her to Madam Hammersly,” 
said Molly, really thinking about the situation 
now. “She is always hiring and discharging maids 
and waitresses. She is awfully particular.” 

“But we’d want to get Cynthia a permanent po- 
sition,” said Beth. 

“Oh ! if the madam liked her — if this girl could 
suit her — she would have a good situation. 
Madam pays well, I believe,” said Molly. 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 


Just then the bundle of blankets on the berth 
began to heave, and a voice came from out of it, 
saying : 

“’Nuffsaid! I take the job! Ow — yowl yowl 
Is it morning? Who’s this girl sitting on me, any- 
way?” 

Molly got up in a hurry. Beth laughed, saying 
to the girl in the berth : 

“How do you know the position will suit you, 
Cynthia ?” 

“Why, any position suits one if one has no 
money — isn’t that so?” said the philosophical one. 
Her clear, low voice made Molly think more fav- 
orably of her — the jolly girl showed this in her 
expression of countenance. 

“How jolly!” she exclaimed, and throwing all 
her previous caution to the winds. “It would be 
great fun to take you to Rivercliff with us.” 

“To school, you mean?” yawned Cynthia Fogg. 

“To school. But to work for Madam Ham- 
mersly. She is housekeeper and general manager. 
Why ! there are twenty or more girls on her staff.” 

“They don’t have to take lessons, do they?” 
demanded Cynthia, apparently rather startled by 
the idea. 

“Oh no !” giggled Molly. “I should say not.” 

“Then I’m willing to try it,” said Cynthia, 
swinging her slender limbs out of bed. “But, 


82 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Miss Baldwin, you didn’t tell me this girl’s name?” 

“So I didn’t. Pardon!” said Beth. “Miss 
Granger.” 

“All right. Now, there isn’t much room in 
here. Miss Granger, for us to dress. So if you’ll 
go out while Miss Baldwin and I are about it, it 
will facilitate matters — don’t you think so?” 

“Well, I like that!” gasped Molly, in a tone 
that showed she did not like it at all. 

But Beth only laughed. That the strange girl 
assumed the right to give orders did not trouble 
the even temper of Beth Baldwin. She said; 

“Cynthia is right, Molly. It is close quarters 
in here. And please run and see if you haven’t a 
collar or a collarette that you can spare, and that 
will help out on this shirt waist I am going to ask 
Cynthia to wear instead of that brown one.” 

“Huh!” grunted Molly. 

“My! you girls are awfully particular about the 
way I look,” Cynthia Fogg declared. 

“If you want to go to Rivercliff with us,” Beth 
said firmly but pleasantly, “you must look neat. 
Mustn’t she, Molly?” 

“Yes indeed!” exclaimed the girl questioned. 

“If I look too nice will they think I need the 
job?” Cynthia asked, bluntly. 

“Cracky-me!” ejaculated Molly, losing her mo- 
mentary “grouch.” “Madam is awfully particu- 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 


83 

lar ! She’d judge your ability to keep her things 
neat by the neatness of your own apparel — sure 
she would !” 

She ran away cheerfully to find things in her 
suitcase to help bedeck the runaway. 

“If I could only get to my trunk!” Beth said 
to Cynthia. “I’ve a hat there that ” 

“Why! mine is a perfectly good hat. Don’t 
you think it’s rather striking?” asked Cynthia, 
with her face turned from Beth’s gaze. 

“Goodness, yes ! That’s the very trouble,” 
gasped Beth, looking at the green hat with the 
purple feather. 

“And the girl who wore it really worked as a 
maid and waitress,” declared Cynthia, as though 
that settled the question of its suitability. 

But Beth was puzzled. Cynthia spoke just as 
though she were playing a part and was proud of 
the fact that she had dressed for it. Yet the girl 
from Hudsonvale could not put her finger upon 
one word Cynthia had said or one thing that she 
had done which really bore out the suspicion that 
she was not exactly what she pretended to be — a 
fugitive from some institution where girls without 
home and friends were confined. 

There was nothing vulgar or mean in the 
strange girl’s speech or actions. She was abrupt 
and rather impolite at times. But that abruptness 


84 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

seemed to spring from a frank character re- 
pressed, rather than from a lack of appreciation of 
proper behavior. Indeed, Beth fancied that Cyn- 
thia felt no social inferiority and was used to treat- 
ing others as her equals in that respect. Or was 
it that she felt herself naturally superior to most 
of those whom she met? 

A strange combination was Cynthia Fogg, that 
was sure. 

Beth finished dressing first and went in search 
of Molly Granger. The jolly girl demanded first 
of all: 

“Isn’t that the strangest girl you ever met, Beth 
Baldwin?” 

Beth sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Either 
she does not know when she offends good taste or 
she does not care. She is an odd-acting girl for 
one in her position.” 

“Yet,” said Molly, reflectively, “there is some- 
thing taking about her.” 

“That’s what I say,” said Beth, brightening up. 

“Anyway, we’ll see if we can get her taken on 
by Madam Hammersly. My! she is so abrupt. 
I wonder what the madam will say to her?” 

“Will she even give her an interview?” asked 
Beth. 

“Sure. We’ll get her a chance to see the 
madam,” said Molly. 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 85 

“You must do that,” said Beth. “I am a 
stranger.” 

“Leave it to me,” said the other girl, with assur- 
rance. “But that hat ! If we could only lose it !” 

“I’d gladly give her another,” Beth cried. 

“Jolly! leave it to me,” Molly said, again nod- 
ding. “I know what to do.” 

They went back together to Number Fifty- 
three. Cynthia was completely dressed, and Beth 
said to her : 

“Come on now. We’ll go to breakfast.” 

“But I’ve no money!” exclaimed the freckled 
girl. 

“I have invited you to go with me,” said Beth. 

“With us,” put in Molly Granger. “You will 
be our guest to-day. How far up the river is 
your fare paid?” 

“To tell you the truth, I had a ticket — er — 
given me to Jackson City,” replied the other, 
speaking slowly. 

“All right,” said Molly, quickly. “That’s be- 
yond Rivercliff. You can get a stop-over.” 

“Well!” said Cynthia Fogg, with a burst of 
emotion. “You are good to me!” 

“Let’s go out on deck for a breath of fresh air 
first,” Molly suggested. 

The trio went outside, through one of the slid- 
ing doors. The deck was wet and the mist stood 


86 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

congealed in drops upon the railing. Into the fog 
their gaze could not penetrate a dozen yards. All 
they could see was a portion of the steamboat it- 
self, and the grayish, muddy water lapping along- 
side and below them. 

“Ugh, how nasty 1’^ said Cynthia Fogg with a 
shudder, leaning over the wet rail. 

“Oh!” squealed Molly, and fell heavily against 
the taller girl. In grabbing at her own hat, her 
elbow struck Cynthia’s topheavy “creation,” and 
the abomination flew off the freckled girl’s head. 

“What are you doing?” demanded Cynthia, in 
some heat, although her voice remained low and 
well modulated. 

“How awkward!” gasped Molly. “Will you 
forgive me. Miss Fogg?” 

The hat had dropped into the water and now 
danced astern. Cynthia cried, rather wildly: 

“Flow shall I ever recover it?” 

“Hat overboard!” exclaimed Molly, giggling 
now. “Call all hands !” 

“Well — it’s my only hat! I don’t believe you 
care,” said Cynthia, eyeing Molly doubtfully. 

“Well, never mind!” Molly said. “No use 
crying over spilled milk.” 

“That isn’t milk,” said the freckled one. “It 
was a perfectly good hat.” 

“Oh !” gasped Molly. 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 


87 

“What’s the matter, Miss Granger?” asked the 
tall girl, suspiciously. “Don’t you suppose I paid 
good money for that hat?” 

“I — I don’t know,” giggled Molly. “Only if 
you did, you must have been color blind.” 

At that Cynthia Fogg burst into a low, agree- 
able laugh. Her blue eyes brightened and 
twinkled. Under her usual demure manner there 
certainly was some sense of fun in this strange 
girl. 

“If I could only get to my trunk,” Beth began, 
but Molly cried : 

“She’ll look all right bareheaded.” 

“They will take me for an immigrant,” said 
Cynthia. 

“That’s better than looking like a scarecrow,” 
said the saucy Molly. “Jolly! if you’d worn that 
freak hat up to the school, and the girls had seen 


“But I sha’n’t mix with the young ladies who 
attend Rivercliff School,” said Cynthia Fogg, de- 
murely. 

“You won’t mind going without a hat for one 
day — and on this boat?” said Beth. 

“Of course she won’t!” cried Molly. 

“I’ll leave mine in the stateroom, too,” sug- 
gested Beth. 

“So will I,” the jolly girl declared. 


88 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Cynthia laughed again. “I never saw girls like 
you two before,” she said. “Go ahead, I’ll do 
whatever you say. I’m in your hands.” 

Beth secretly thought that Cynthia had made a 
very honest confession in this statement. She 
seemed perfectly satisfied to allow her friends to 
go ahead and plan for her. 

They went upstairs to the saloon deck to break- 
fast, and had a very pleasant meal, despite the 
gloominess of the day. Beth noted that Cynthia 
had surely been well brought up. She was quite 
used to good form in table manners. She was not 
on her guard against mistakes; the proper table 
etiquette was as natural to this runaway girl as 
breathing. 

The W ater Wagtail plodded up the river 
through the thick mist all the forenoon, stopping 
now and then at misty landings. But at noon the 
weather cleared suddenly and then the beauty of 
the banks was revealed to Beth Baldwin, who had 
never before been so far from Hudsonvale. 

During the forenoon two girls came aboard the 
steamboat whom Molly Granger introduced to 
Beth. They were Stella Price and Lil Browne. 

“Notice the ‘e,’ please, at the end of Lil’s 
name,” said the jolly girl. “That is why she is 
a ‘Brownie’ — and we all call her that, don’t we, 
Brownie?” 


RIVERCLIFF LANDING 89 

“Of course we do, Jolly Molly,” returned the 
new girl, laughing. 

So Beth learned that, quite in keeping with her 
language and character, her new chum was known 
by everybody at Rivercliff as “Jolly Molly” 
Granger. 

Cynthia Fogg stayed in the stateroom mosF of 
the day. She did not put herself forward or try 
to take advantage of the other girls’ consideration 
for her. She kept to herself, either from a feeling 
that she was not of the class of these girls going 
to Rivercliff to school, or because — because 

“Can it be that she feels herself above us?” 
thought the puzzled Beth. 

But she did not whisper this thought, even to 
Molly Granger. 

The day was spent pleasantly enough by Beth 
and the other girls. The banks of the river were 
an ever-changing panorama of beauty; the small 
landings and the larger towns came in rapid suc- 
cession, for it was a thickly inhabited part of the 
State. 

Late in the day Rivercliff came into view. 
Molly pointed it out to the Hudsonvale girl with 
pride. 

There was a small landing at the foot of a high, 
gray bluff. The village on the river’s immediate 
bank did not number fifty houses. A road, plainly 


90 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

marked, wound up the face of the bluff, to which 
several little houses clung like limpets to a rock. 
On the brow of the bluff was a huge, brick house, 
with towers at the two front corners, and wings 
thrown out on either side. There were several 
smaller buildings that evidently belonged to the 
school, too. 

To tell the truth, Beth Baldwin, at first view, 
thought Rivercliff School rather ugly. 


CHAPTER X 


A NEW WORLD 

Beth Baldwin had always supposed that all 
girls were “just girls.” Her experience in the pub- 
lic schools of Hudsonvale had taught her that 
most of her companions were, as Ella sometimes 
said, “made by the piece and cut off by the yard.” 

That is, after all was said and done, there was 
not much variety in girls’ characters as displayed 
by the girl pupils of the Hudsonvale schools. 
There were the nice, quiet girls, and the wild, “gig- 
gly” ones; the vain girls, as well as the meek, in- 
consequential girls; with a scattering of smart, 
up-to-the-minute girls, as well as some lovable, 
cheerful girls whom it was a delight to know; and, 
of course, there were a few downright mean girls 
who were best left alone. 

In fact, Beth, before coming to Rivercliff 
School, had thought of girls as “sorts,” rather 
than as individuals. She was now to learn that 
one of the things that a well conducted boarding 
school does to a girl, is to bring out her individ- 
uality, and if she has any color to her character at 
91 


92 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

all to deepen that color and develop her distinctive 
traits. 

Molly Granger was just a little different from 
any girl Beth had ever before known. Despite 
her jolly, careless, cheerful disposition she was 
certainly different, for instance, from Beth’s 
friend, Mary Devine. There was a self-confidence 
in Molly that no girl could possess without having 
been out in the world for some time. Yet she was 
not bold. 

Stella Price and “Brownie,” as Beth found all 
the other girls called Lilian Browne, were like- 
wise distinctly dissimilar. Both were in the grade 
above that which Beth would enter. They called 
themselves “sophomores.” 

-Stella was a strangely aloof girl — one of those 
persons whose minds seem traveling afar most of 
the time, without being dreamers. Oh no ! there 
was nothing idealistic in Stella Price’s character. 
But, if a member of a group of girls, she was 
always the one who appeared to be listening and 
who seemed to have little in common with the rest 
of the crowd. 

“You’d think,” was Molly Granger’s comment 
upon Stella, “that she was as wise as an owl. The 
appearance of wisdom fairly trickles out of her- 
lineaments right now, doesn’t it? And I wager 
she’s thinking of nothing more important than 



A TALL, :MASTEKFUL GIRL STOOD AT THE MAIN ENTRANCE 
TO WELCOME THEM. Page 9.^. 




A NEW WORLD 


93 

whether she’ll have two or four rows of stitching 
on the hem of her skirt.” 

“Oh, Molly!” laughed Beth. 

“Fact. As for Brownie — she’s just a nice, cud- 
dly girl, and I love her. But she’s the most ob- 
stinate toad in the whole school 1” 

This conversation had been held on the boat. 
Of course, Beth had little chance to see many of 
her schoolmates that first evening. She and 
Molly, with the two sophomores and Cynthia 
Fogg, piled into an automobile bound for the 
school. Molly put Cynthia beside the driver. 
Stella and Brownie were very curious about Cyn- 
thia. 

“Who is she, Molly?” whispered Brownie. 
“She’s never coming to the school?” 

“Not as a pupil. I’m going to try to get her a 
place with Madam Hammersly.” 

“Goodness! The poor thing,” sighed Stella, 
commiseratingly. 

Evidently, the girls considered the principal’s 
mother a good deal of a Tartar. Beth herself 
had an opportunity for judging almost as soon as 
they arrived at Rivercliff, regarding the important 
person in question. 

A tall, masterful girl stood at the main en- 
trance to the great school building to welcome the 
arrivals. 


94 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Just report yourselves at the office, SteUa and 
Brownie and Jolly Molly. Who’s the freshie?” 
she asked, halting Beth. 

“Beth Baldwin,” she was told. 

“All right. You for the madam’s room.” 

“I’ll see to her. Miss Teller,” said Molly, very 
respectfully, to this senior. “I’m going with Miss 
Baldwin to the madam.” 

“And who’s this?” demanded the monitor, 
stopping the hatless Cynthia. 

“I am going to take her to the madam, too,” 
whispered Molly. “She’s a girl looking for work 
as parlor-maid or waitress or something.” 

“We-ell. You know this isn’t the entrance for 
them. And madam is dreadfully particular,” said 
Miss Teller, doubtfully. “Come back and tell me 
if she’s to stay, Molly.” 

“All right,” agreed the other, and she with her 
two protegees went in. 

The entrance hall of Rivercliff School was a 
revelation to Beth. She had been in two or three 
of the better houses of Hudsonvale besides that of 
Mrs. Euphemia Haven; but none of them had 
been on a scale with this, nor of such style. 

The ceiling was very lofty. There were several 
very good paintings on the walls, and they were 
properly hung. The furniture was heavy and of 
substantial appearance, rather than ornate. The 


A NEW WORLD 


95 

upholstery and hangings were in soft tones and of 
rich fabrics which gave an air of splendor to the 
place that almost awed the newcomer. She felt 
very much like the country mouse visiting his city 
relative. 

“Isn’t it scrumptious?” whispered Molly, who 
appreciated just how the new girl felt. “I tell you, 
this and the two drawing rooms are the show 
places of Rivercliff.” 

“And this beautiful staircase,” murmured Beth, 
gazing up the polished spiral that ascended in the 
middle of the great room. 

“Do you know,” giggled Molly, “this reception 
hall and that staircase were what brought me here 
to school?” 

“No!” 

“Yes,” exclaimed the jolly girl, but with more 
seriousness. “Aunt Celia came here first and saw 
it. Then Aunt Catherine journeyed up the river 
to behold its wonders. Next, Auntie Cora and 
Aunt Carrie thought they must see it — and they 
did so. 

“I came to school for the first term, and Aunt 
Charlotte got so lonesome for a sight of me, so 
she said, that she came up to visit. But I found 
her here, every chance she got, just soaking her 
mind in the artistic atmosphere of this reception 
hall,” giggled Molly. 


96 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“After that Aunt Cassie and Aunt Cyril simply 
had to see it ” 

“But, Molly!” almost shrieked Beth, in amaze- 
ment, seizing the other girl by her arm. “Every 
one of your aunts’ names begins with ‘C’ 1” 

“Yes. I know it.” 

“But — but Isn’t that funny?” 

“No. Only alliterative,” said Molly, wide- 
eyed. 

Cynthia’s low, mellow laugh broke out sud- 
denly. “And their parents never even thought of 
my name, I suppose?” she said. 

“I don’t know. At least, grandmother had no 
other girls to name. She liked the ‘C,’ I suppose, 
because all her forebears were mariners,” de- 
clared Molly, with great seriousness. 

“Did you ever hear the like?” murmured Cyn- 
thia Fogg. 

“I wonder how much we can really believe of 
what Molly says?” said Beth, pinching the cul- 
prit’s ear. “All this about your aunts — and seven 
of them I — make me doubt if you have any aunts at 
all.” 

“Cracky-me!” ejaculated Molly. “Wait till 
you see ’em.” 

“Shall I ever?” said Beth Baldwin. 

“I have their pictures — drawn by myself — in my 
room,” said Molly, solemnly. 


A NEW WORLD 


97 

“Come, Jolly Molly!” warned the tall senior 
behind them, “take the freshies along with you to 
the madam.” 

Molly marched briskly in the lead toward the 
rear of the great hall. Beth saw several girls 
looking over the balustrade above ; but they 
popped back in a hurry, laughing, when they saw 
themselves observed. There was, however, from 
somewhere above, the hum of voices. 

It was after the supper hour. There must be, 
Beth thought, a recreation room on the second 
floor where the pupils gathered in the evening. 

Molly was knocking with gloved knuckles on 
a door at the rear of the hall. A brisk voice said, 
“Come in!” and the girls entered a very plainly 
furnished, yet pleasant room. It was a contrast 
to the luxurious entrance hall of the school; but 
everything was good and very comfortable. 

There was revealed, when the door swung open, 
a lady in black, with a white lace collar on her old- 
fashioned, full-skirted gown and a white cap on 
her iron-gray curls. She was sitting in a high- 
backed chair at a small desk, on which was an ac- 
count book. She stood up promptly, in quite a 
military fashion, and looked at the trio of youth- 
ful visitors through her eyeglasses. 

She was a small, slight woman, in reality; yet 
she stood so straight, and looked so stern and un- 


98 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

bending, that she seemed to Beth to be at least six 
feet tall. 

“Good evening, young ladies. Miss Granger, 
I am glad to see you back. How did you leave 
your aunts?” 

“All seven of them. Madam?” asked Jolly 
Molly, roguishly. “Collectively, do you mean, or 
shall I give their individual symptoms?” 

“I see you are determined to wear the cap and 
bells,” said Madam Hammersly; yet she smiled 
“I fancy all seven are reasonably well.” 

“And all seven sent their respects to you. 
Madam,” declared Molly. 

“They are very kind. Will you introduce these 
others, Miss Granger?” 

She glanced swiftly from Beth to Cynthia and 
back again as she asked the question. 

“This is Miss Beth Baldwin,” Molly said. 
“She comes from Hudsonvale. I met her on the 
boat. We are chums already. Madam Ham- 
mersly.” 

The madam nodded and smiled at Beth; but the 
latter did not feel that she was expected to take 
the lady’s hand, nor was it offered. 

“She enters the first grade, you know. Madam. 
Can’t she have the room next to mine?” begged 
Molly. “You see, she has no friend here but me, 
arid has never been away from home before.” 


A NEW WORLD 


99 

“I will think of that,’^ promised the madam. 
Then she looked inquiringly at Cynthia Fogg. 

“And this, Madam Hammersly,” Molly said, 
stepping nearer to the lady, “is a girl we met who 
is quite needy. She is looking for work. Her 
name is Cynthia Fogg. I am very sure she is a 
nice girl. She came up from Hudsonvale and 
shared my friend, Beth’s, stateroom. I told her 
I would introduce her to your notice. Madam. 
She really needs work.” 

The madam looked askance at Jolly Molly for 
an instant. “This is scarcely the time,” she be- 
gan, but Molly interrupted : 

“I know. Madam. I hope you will forgive me. 
But she had nowhere to go — no friends and no 
money. She had a ticket to Jackson City, where 
she was going to look for work; but she had noth- 
ing in view there, and no more friends than she 
has here. Not so many, for Beth and I are her 
friends.” 

Cynthia Fogg flashed the jolly girl a single won- 
dering glance. That anybody should show par- 
ticular interest in her seemed to amaze her. 

“I — don’t — know,” said Madam Hammersly, 
slowly, looking at the applicant thus introduced 
with her very sharp eyes. “You may sit down, 
girl. I will see you after I have finished with the 
young ladies.” 


100 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

She at once made a sharp distinction between 
the pupils of the school and the applicant for 
work. Cynthia calmly turned to seat herself in 
a chair in a retired corner of the room. Madam 
Hammersly looked again at Beth, and with more 
interest. 

“And this is Miss Baldwin?” she asked. 

“Beth Baldwin, Madam,” said Molly, nai/ely. 
“And she’s awfully nice.” 

“I do not doubt it,” said the lady, kindly. “I 
hope you will find Rivercliff a pleasant home and 
school. Miss Baldwin. You will not see Miss 
Hammersly until morning. Then you may go 
to her office for examination after prayers, which 
immediately follow breakfast. Miss Granger can 
tell you all about the rules of the school — not be« 
cause she never breaks them, however,” she added, 
with grim pleasantry. 

“Go to Miss Small for your supper. Miss 
Granger. Later I will see if I can do as you wish 
about Miss Baldwin’s room. Have your trunks 
come?” she suddenly asked Beth. 

“My trunk and bag came with me. Madam,” 
answered Beth. 

“The remainder of your baggage will come 
later, I presume?” said madam. 

“Why, that trunk is all I have!” Beth blurted 
out. 


A NEW WORLD 


lOI 


“Ah? Your parents do not believe In an exten- 
sive wardrobe for a schoolgirl. Perhaps they are 
quite right,” the lady said placidly. “I will see, 
Miss Granger, If I can assign Miss Baldwin to the 
room of which you speak. You mean Number 
Eighty, of which Miss Purcell was the last occu- 
pant?” 

“Yes, Madam.” 

“I will see. You may now go. I wish you both 
good night. I hope you will find your place in 
this — to you — new world. Miss Baldwin, and find 
it easily.” 

Beth thanked her, and then turned to Cynthia 
before she left the room in Molly’s wake. “I do 
hope you will be successful in pleasing her,” she 
whispered, warmly squeezing the freckled girl’s 
hand. 

Then she hurried out. She felt that the madam’s 
stern eyes were upon her. This was. Indeed, a 
new world to Beth Baldwin, and she had much be- 
sides book-lessons to learn in it. 


CHAPTER XI 


“the glass of fashion” 

The two girls had supper in Miss Small’s 
room. Miss Small was the under housekeeper, 
and a very excellent woman. Beth liked her at 
once. 

While they were still at the table, a set of 
Japanese gongs, somewhere in the corridor, rung 
by electricity, sounded. This marked half-past 
eight. 

“No chance to show you off to the girls to- 
night, Beth,” said Jolly Molly. “That’s the sig- 
nal for us all to retire to our rooms. Of course, 
‘lights out’ is not sounded for an hour yet; but 
visiting back and forth in the final hour before 
bedtime is frowned upon by the ‘powers that be.’ 
That is why I hope the madam will give you Num- 
ber Eighty. I have Eighty-one. There’s a door 
between and we have the sole use of a private 
bathroom. It’s scrumptious I” 

Just then a lady entered whom Beth had not 
seen before — a pleasant-faced lady with youthful 
features but very white hair. Miss Carroll 
102 


‘THE GLASS OF FASHION’’ 103 

owned a baby-fair, pink and white complexion. 
Her lovely hair, massed high upon her small head, 
made her look queenly — something, Beth whis- 
pered to Molly, in the style of Marie Antoinette ! 

“Is this Miss Baldwin, Molly?” asked the lady. 

“Yes, Miss Carroll,” Jolly Molly said. “She 
is my new chum.” 

“Yes? She is to occupy Eighty. I hope we 
shall have only good reports this half from Eighty 
and Eighty-one.” 

“My goodness I” whispered Molly to Beth. 
“It’s fairly uncanny the way they seem to expect 
bad reports from us ! Madam hinted at it. I 
don’t see how they all came to have such a doubt- 
ful opinion of you, Bethesda Elizabeth !” 

“Of me?” gasped the new girl. 

“Why — yes — of course. They know me,” said 
Molly, demurely. 

Beth laughed. She was sure her new chum had 
not a spark of real wickedness in her. But Molly 
Granger was full of mischief. Beth now asked 
about Miss Carroll. 

“Oh, she’s math and Eng — and an awfully nice 
sort, too.” 

“ ‘Math’ and ‘Eng?’ ” repeated Beth, laughing. 
“Is that her religion and politics?” 

“No. What she teaches. Mathematics and 
English.” 


104 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 
“Oh!” 

“She’s altogether lovely,” Molly said. “That 
cannot be said of all the instructors — no, indeed! 
Good night. Miss Small,” she added, in a louder 
key to the under housekeeper. “Come along, 
Bethesda! We’ll go up and say ‘how-do’ to our 
rooms. Have our bags been sent up. Miss Small?” 

“Jonas has them on the lift. Miss,” the house- 
keeper said. 

“We’ll walk,” said Molly to Beth. “I don’t 
like that elevator, anyway— just because they call 
it a ‘lift.’ That’s too awfully ‘Henglish’ for me, 
you know. I am a true-blue American girl — a 
regular ‘jingoess.’ I shout for the Stars and 
Stripes, and scream with the eagle ” 

“Or at a mouse?” suggested Beth, wickedly. 

“Ugh! Yes! Who doesn’t?” 

“I wonder if Cynthia Fogg was hired by 
Madam Hammersly?” Beth said aloud, as they 
mounted the main stairway. 

“I’d really like to know, too,” agreed Molly. 

“You don’t suppose that Cynthia was turned 
out? Put right out-of-doors, I mean, if the madam 
did not like her looks?” 

“Sh !” whispered Molly. “That’s why I sprang 
Cynthia on the madam the way I did. She’s really 
the most tender-hearted thing you ever saw or 
heard of. She only appears stern. And when she 


“THE GLASS OF FASHION” 105 

understands that that girl has no home and 
friends ” 

“You think she will be kind to her?” 

“Sure she will ! She’s kind to all the girls who 
work for her. Only she’s awfully particular. 
You ought to see her going around after them 
when they sweep and dust. Oh! if they leave a 
speck of dust M-m-m 1 ” 

“I hope she’ll take Cynthia on,” sighed Beth, 
as they reached the top of the stairs. 

Two corridors branched away, right and left, 
from the gallery around the hall. 

“I tell you how we’ll find out about Cynthia — 
maybe,” said Molly. “We’ll ask Jonas. Come 
on I We want our bags, too. He’ll be waiting at 
the elevator in the south wing.” 

She started along the corridor into the wing 
in question, and then mounted ahead of Beth an- 
other flight to the third floor. They met no other 
girls, although some of the doors were open and 
Beth caught glimpses of pleasant interiors and 
groups of gossiping girls. 

They finally came, panting, to the elevator 
cage, where a shiny-faced negro boy sat on his 
stool inside the car, with the bags belonging to the 
two girls at his feet. 

“I’m yere. Miss Molly,” he said, grinning at 
the girl he knew. 


io6 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


“I see you, Jonas,” she said, collecting her suit- 
case and bag. “I’ve had my eyes treated while I 
was home and I can see pretty well now, Jonas.” 

“He! he!” giggled the black boy. 

“Say, Jonas 1 Tell me something.” 

“Yes’m,” said Jonas promptly, as he saw Molly 
fumbling in her purse. 

“Who is the new girl the madam has just 
hired?” 

“Lawsyl” chuckled Jonas. “How’d you 
knowed she hired that girl?” 

“She was in madam’s room while we were,” 
said Molly, composedly. 

“You mean that tall, freckled-faced girl, don’t 
you?” asked Jonas. 

“Y es. What is her name ?” 

“Cynthie. Dat wot Miss Small called her when 
she brought her downstairs,” said Jonas. 

The two girls exchanged satisfied glances. 
Molly put a small coin in the boy’s palm. “Come 
on, Beth,” she said. “Eighty and Eighty-one are 
right around this way.” 

A side corridor brought them, followed by 
Jonas with the bags, to two doors not far from 
each other and with the two numbers in question 
painted on the lintels. Other doors were open 
on the corridor and Molly Granger was hailed 
by other girls. 


“THE GLASS OF FASHION” 107 

“Hullo, Jolly Molly!” 

“How are the seven pussy cats?” was one mys- 
terious greeting. 

“How’s tricks, Molly?” demanded one girl. 
“Full of new ones?” 

“Sh! don’t ruin my reputation right at the 
start,” begged Molly, of this last girl. 

Beth was peering into the open door of 
Number Eighty — her room, where Jonas had al- 
ready left her bag. Suddenly a voice drawled be- 
hind her: 

“Who is that with you, Molly Granger?” 

“My new chum,” said Molly, sharply; and 
Beth turned to see who had first spoken. 

A girl stood at the open door directly across 
the hall from Number Eighty. She was a pale 
girl in a light blue kimono of heavy, beautiful 
silk, with silver dragons worked upon it — a most 
beautiful garment, Beth thought. The girl her- 
self was languid in her manner, had pale eyelashes 
and hair as well as bloodless complexion. In- 
deed, she looked as though some pigment was lack- 
ing in her system entirely, she was so positively 
colorless. 

“What’s her name, Molly?” drawled this 
apparition. 

“This is Miss Beth Baldwin. Miss Maude 
Grimshaw, Beth. You live right opposite to each 


io8 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

other,” whispered Molly, in conclusion, “and, be- 
lieve me! you have opposite natures.” 

Miss Grimshaw had given Beth a cold little 
nod and had gone back into her room. 

“What a beautiful kimono that is she wears,” 
Beth said calmly. 

“Maude is the one of whom I told you,” Molly 
sniffed. “Our ‘glass of fashion and mold of 
form.’ ” 

“Oh! the dreadfully fashionable girl?” 

“Fashion is no name for it!” groaned Molly. 
“She sports the finest frocks at Rivercliff. She 
turns all our heads. Oh! she’s a charmer.” 

“Why,” said Beth, “I fancy you don’t like her, 
Molly. 

“Cracky-me!” ejaculated Molly, round-eyed. 
“How did you come to guess that?” 

Beth saw that her friend felt rather keenly on 
this subject, so she did not probe deeper. She 
had not seen Miss Grimshaw long enough, her- 
self, to judge the pale girl. But Molly seemed 
to be such a universal favorite, and so kind and 
merry with everybody else, that Beth wondered 
about Maude Grimshaw. As it chanced, Beth was 
soon to learn just what her neighbor in the blue 
silk kimono was. 

At the present time, however, the girl from 
Hudsonvale was more interested in the room she 


“THE GLASS OF FASHION” 109 

was to occupy. There were small girls in the 
school who roomed together — “a whole raft of 
primes in each dormitory,” Molly explained — 
but the older pupils of Rivercliff had each a room 
of her own and they could live as privately as they 
could at home. And when she had seen them, 
Beth thought Numbers Eighty and Eighty-one 
must be the nicest rooms in the whole school. 

“Which they are — about,” Molly said, when 
Beth expressed this belief. “I expected to have 
to fight for Eighty-one when I came back this fall. 
You see, Greba Purcell had your room for four 
years. She left in June just before graduation. 

Right away Princess Fancyfoot ” 

“Who?” gasped Beth. 

“That’s what I sometimes call Maude Grim- 
shaw. She wanted a couple of her ‘Me toos’ to 

have Eighty and Eighty-one ” 

“What do you mean by ‘Me toos?’ ” 

“Why, girls who agree always with Princess 
Fancyfoot. There are ‘sich,’ my dear, though you 
mightn’t suppose it,” Molly said, laughing. “ ‘For 
wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles 
be gathered together.’ ” 

“Oh, Molly! I wouldn’t speak so,” begged 
Beth. 

“Oh, pshaw I Gnw-shaw, I might say,” chuck- 
led Molly. “You don’t know her yet.” 


1 10 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

But there was so much to see and so many new 
ideas to grasp, that Beth did not that evening give 
much thought to the possibility of an unpleasant 
neighbor. Her own room was of good size with 
two windows. The bathroom between Number 
Eighty and Eighty-one was tiled and had a shower. 

“You see,” explained Molly, “Greba’s father 
had this bath put in at his own expense for her 
particular use. Miss Process, who had my room 
before I got it, enjoyed Miss Purcell’s friendship, 
too. Oh! Greba was an awfully nice girl— and 
her father could have bought and sold Princess 
Fancyfoot’s father half a dozen times over and 
never missed the money. The Purcells are a dif- 
ferent breed of rich folks from the Grimshaws — 
believe me 1 

“And say! we’re two lucky girls to get these 
rooms. First grades don’t usually get their pick 
of accommodations. No, indeedy!” 

It was not until the next day, however, that 
Beth realized the truth of this statement of 
Molly’s — and learned, too, what a very unpleasant 
neighbor she had in Maude Grimshaw. 


CHAPTER XII 


FINDING HER PLACE 

In each corridor was a set of the Japanese 
gongs, and Beth Baldwin lay awake the next 
morning and listened to the electrically rung bells 
beginning at the top of the great house and in both 
wings, and repeated all down the line. They were 
mellow bells and pleasant to hear — and Beth did 
not mind rising at seven o’clock. 

Although lessons did not begin until Monday, 
and not more than half the girls had yet arrived, 
the discipline of the school began on this Satur- 
day morning. Breakfast was at eight; prayers 
three-quarters of an hour later. After this gen- 
eral gathering in the general hall, Beth found her 
way to the office, and to her first interview with 
the principal of Rivercliff. 

Miss Hammersly was of small stature like her 
mother. But there was scarcely anything else in 
the principal’s appearance, Beth thought, that re- 
minded the new pupil of the stern and military 
madam. 

Miss Hammersly had curly hair, it is true, as 

III 


1 12 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

had her mother. Possibly she might have been 
very pretty as a girl; but the duties and trials of 
her position had marred her forehead with lines 
of care, and had tinged her hair with gray. She 
had very bright eyes like the madam’s own; but 
they often softened and became dreamy as she 
spoke — the eyes of a truly imaginative person. 

Imagination was the root of Miss Hammersly’s 
success. Had she not possessed it, and in abun- 
dance, she could never have brought this great 
school (and that twenty years before) to a stand- 
ard of excellence quite remarkable. 

Fortunately, she had obtained the patronage of 
wealthy people from the start. Without sacrific- 
ing her standard of excellence that put her gradu- 
ates considerably above those from other prepara- 
tory schools of the State, Miss Hammersly man- 
aged to satisfy the parents of girls on whom much 
more money than was good for them was spent. 

Not that all her pupils’ parents were like Maude 
Grimshaw’s. Miss Hammersly had to coax 
Maude and her kind along the thorny paths of 
learning. Yet some of the brightest girls at the 
school were daughters of extremely wealthy peo- 
ple. Wealth was not a barrier which it was im- 
possible to hurdle ! 

“I wrote to your principal at the Hudsonvale 
high school,” Miss Hammersly said to Beth Bald- 


FINDING HER PLACE 


113 

win, “and he gave me an excellent report of you. 
He likewise tells me that you are striving to earn 
a part of the money to pay for your courses here 
at Rivercliff. Is this so, Miss Baldwin?” 

“Yes, Miss Hammersly,” Beth said, rather flut- 
teringly. 

“I am glad to have such independent girls as 
you with us,” the lady said, smiling kindly. “We 
have too many of the ‘parasite’ class in this world. 
Welcome to the producer! Be something and do 
something in the world; that is a good motto. 

“There are ways open to bright girls to earn 
money, not only in vacation time, but during the 
semester. Later, when you have proved your abil- 
ity, there may be pupil teaching. Some of our 
primary pupils are not forward children and they 
need the encouragement of older girls. I shall be 
glad to make use of you in this way, Elizabeth 
Baldwin, if you prove yourself capable.” 

The lady spoke very kindly to Beth all through 
this interview, evidently wishing to convince the 
new pupil that she was just as welcome to River- 
cliff School as those girls from wealthier homes. 
Yet Beth had already gained an impression that 
the tone of the school was one of fashion and idle 
show. 

At prayers, better than at breakfast, Beth had 
been able to gain a view of the school — or of 


1 14 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

such of its membership as was present — and she 
saw that there was scarcely a girl among them all 
as plainly dressed as she. 

Even Molly Granger seemed very fancifully 
clothed beside Beth. Beth’s traveling dress was 
a very good one. As she had confessed to Molly, 
that, and the poplin she had worn to Larry Hav- 
en’s party, were her two best gowns. The other 
frocks Mrs. Baldwin had made for her daughter 
were of good wearing material, but inexpensive. 

“My, but you look like a quiet little brown 
mouse !” Molly had said that morning, when she 
saw Beth dressed to go down to breakfast. 

And even that pleasant comment was a criticism, 
Beth now realized. This was truly a new world 
to her. She had no idea that girls from fourteen 
to eighteen could be so fashionable. 

There was a rustle of silk petticoats as the girls 
took seats beside her in the hall; the laces dis- 
played were real; the ribbons flaunted were of the 
very best quality; and alrriost every girl she saw 
wore more or less jewelry. 

Beth tried the effect of Larry’s present at the 
collar of her simple gingham when she went back 
to Number Eighty after her interview with Miss 
Hammersly, and saw immediately that the pin 
did not go at all with such a frock. Even Larry 
knew more about what girls wore at a school like 


FINDING HER PLACE 115 

Rivercliff than she and her mother had known! 
It was a very pretty pin; but to wear it with a 
gingham dress was certainly not the thing. 

Jolly Molly said nothing to her about her ap- 
pearance save that first comment. But Beth be- 
gan to be afraid that her commonplace garments 
would shame her new chum before the other girls. 
Molly did not dress in such expensive gowns as 
many of the girls; but her seven aunts certainly 
did not restrict their niece to plain clothing. Beth 
saw her chum’s two trunks unpacked in wonder. 

It did not take Beth long to unpack her trunk. 
It was a small affair at best, and she had had hard 
work to find enough to fill it properly before leav- 
ing home. She hung her dresses in the closet very 
quickly and shut the door. She was actually 
ashapied to have Molly or any of the other girls 
examine her possessions. 

The girls were continually running back and 
forth from room to room, chattering and display- 
ing their new possessions, and having a good time 
generally. For, there being no lessons on this 
day, there was naturally more freedom allowed 
than usual. 

Molly, Beth found, had a wealth of ornaments, 
photographs, pennants, Indian beadwork, a real 
Navajo blanket, cushions galore, and a multitude 
of other articles for the adornment of Number 


ii6 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Eighty-one. Many of these possessions she had 
left in the school storeroom during the vacation 
months, and now brought them forth. 

Beth had brought with her photographs of the 
home folk, of course. She had also her own 
pretty toilet set and various nicknacks that she 
fancied particularly. But Number Eighty looked 
like a poor place indeed beside Molly’s room. 

“Oh, it takes a year or two at school for a girl 
to collect sufficient ‘lares and penates’ for her 
room to look real homey,” declared Molly, when 
Beth mentioned this difference in the appearance 
of their rooms. 

“It’s really scarcely worth while my spreading 
around my poor little possessions,” laughed Beth. 
“There are not enough of them to make a show in 
this big room.” 

“Quite true. Miss Baldwin,” drawled a voice at 
the open door of Number Eighty. “And, there- 
fore, before you unpack any more of your things 
I’ve a proposal to make to you.” 

“Hullo! here’s Princess Fancyfoot,” muttered 
Molly Granger. 

“Good morning. Miss Grimshaw,” said Beth, 
placidly, to the girl from across the hall. 

“I want you to know my friend. Miss Laura 
Hedden,” went on Maude, with a most patroniz- 
ing air. “Miss Baldwin, Laura.” 


FINDING HER PLACE 


117 

Laura was a very dark girl — as dark as Maude 
was fair. Instead of having Beth’s brilliant bru- 
nette coloring, however, Laura had a muddy com- 
plexion. Her straight hair was black and her 
sharp eyes suspicious. She had not a word to say 
for herself,, but nodded to Beth rather sullenly. 

“We’ve come to talk to you. Miss Baldwin,” 
said Maude Grimshaw, looking significantly at 
Molly. 

“Cracky-me!” cried the latter. “Is anything 
you have to say ever a secret, Maude?” 

“Not if you get hold of it, Molly,” said the 
other girl, promptly. “That is why I have in- 
quired of Miss Baldwin if we may speak with her 
alone.” 

“Well, I declare!” ejaculated Molly, and be- 
fore Beth could interfere her chum had flounced 
into the passage between the two rooms and 
banged shut the door. 

“Now that you have driven my friend away,” 
Beth said, rather sharply, “perhaps you will be 
kind enough to tell me what you want, Miss Grim- 
shaw?” 

“Shut that door behind you, Laura,” said 
Maude, looking at the hall door by which she and 
her friend had just entered. “She may come 
around to listen if it is open. Oh, Miss Baldwin, 
don’t look at me in that way. We know Molly 


ii8 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Granger rather better than you do, I fancy. I 
understand that you only met her on the boat com- 
ing up to school?” 

“That is true,” admitted Beth, quietly. 

“So Brownie said. Weill we know Molly. 
Don’t we, Laura?” 

“Oh ! don’t we I” echoed the dark girl, and im- 
mediately Beth guessed that Laura Hedden must 
be one of the “Me toos” of whom Molly had 
spoken. She was Maude Grimshaw’s satellite. 

“Is — is it Molly you have come to speak 
about?” asked Beth. “For if it is, I shall call 
her in. I would not discuss any friend in such a 
way as this.” 

Maude laughed, but her pale eyes flashed. “Oh, 
no. It is your own affairs of which I wish to 
speak.” 

“Thank you for your interest. Miss Grimshaw,” 
said Beth. “But I do not understand.” 

“Well!” exclaimed the rather exasperated 
Maude. “You came up the river with another 
girl — a girl whom the madam has hired as maid. 
Isn’t that so?” 

“Yes.” 

“She’s a friend of yours, of course?” 

“Cynthia? Certainly.” 

“Then I presume — by that and other unmistak- 
able marks — that you are not from very well-to-do 


FINDING HER PLACE 


119 

people, Miss Baldwin?” demanded Maude, com- 
placently. 

“My father earns three dollars and seventy-five 
cents a day; my mother made my dresses; I ex- 
pect to pay for a part of my tuition here by some 
work — of what kind I do not yet know.” Beth 
said it all defiantly, her black eyes flashing. 

“Quite so,” Maude rejoined, as though all this 
was pleasing to her. “Very commendable on your 
part. Pm sure, too. Miss Baldwin. And I can 
show you how you may at once aid yourself — 
and nobody be the wiser.” 

Beth looked at her curiously, but said nothing. 

“I have always wanted one of my friends to 
have Number Eighty,” Maude hurried on to say. 
“Ed like to get Eighty-one for another, too; but 
Molly Granger is a regular dog in a manger. You, 
however, have more sense, I should suppose.” 

“Thank you. Miss Grimshaw,” said Beth, but 
in a tone that did not seem entirely grateful. 

“Now, you see what we’re after. Miss Bald- 
win,” said Maude, coolly. “I want you to ex- 
change rooms with Laura. Really, she has a very 
nice room in the other wing; but she is too far 
away. She is quite necessary to my comfort — 
really, she is,” continued the girl. “And I am sure 
you will find the girls over there quite as pleasant 
as those on this corridor.” 


120 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


“Thank you, Miss Grimshaw. I do not care 
to change,” Beth said, quite calmly. “Of course, 
you will excuse me?” 

“But you haven’t heard my proposal yet,” 
Maude hastened to say. “I expect to pay you for 
the accommodation. One doesn’t get something 
for nothing in this world — I have found that out I” 
and she laughed rather scornfully. 

“I do not understand you,” said Beth, sharply. 

“Why, you will do something or other for 
money to help pay your tuition here. I don’t sup- 
pose it much matters what as long as it is not too 
hard. We have had girls like you at Rivercliff 
before. Miss Baldwin. Miss Hammersly rather 
prides herself upon having about so many each 
year, I believe,” she added, carelessly. 

“Still I do not understand you!” cried Beth 
again, her eyes flashing. 

“No? Really? I fancied I spoke plainly 
enough. I will pay you for the exchange you 
make with Laura, Miss Baldwin,” said Maude, 
rather sharply. 

“I do not care to make the exchange.” 

“But I will pay you for it — don’t you under- 
stand?^’ demanded the other girl, exasperated. 

“You cannot pay me for it — for I refuse,” said 
Beth. “I like this room. I like my neighbors — 
all but you. Miss Grimshaw. I do not care to 


FINDING HER PLACE 


I2I 


make the exchange. Now, am I plain enough?” 

“My goodness me!” giggled Maude, her pale 
face suddenly reddening in a very ugly way. “No- 
body would call you pretty I should hope. Miss 
Baldwin.” 

“Then I am quite understood?” repeated Beth, 
ignoring this remark. 

“I suppose you think your room is worth more 
than we can afford to pay?” sneered Maude. 

“You have struck it — exactly,” said Beth, with 
flashing eyes. “You think that I have a price,” 
she continued. “Perhaps you have been in the 
habit of dealing with girls who will sell anything 
they possess for money. I have made Molly my 
friend. If I exchanged in this way it would look 
as though I did not appreciate her friend- 
ship ” 

“Pooh!” exclaimed Maude. “You don’t know 
her as well as we do. Does she, Laura?” 

“I should say not,” sniffed the “Me too.” 

“I am glad I do not know Molly in the way you 
seem to think you know her,” Beth said, so angry 
that her voice shook now. “Will you please go? 
The room will remain mine as long as Miss Ham- 
mersly allows me to keep it.” 

“Oh, come on!” snapped Maude, finally, grab- 
bing Laura Hedden by the arm and marching with 
her out of Number Eighty. 


122 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Beth was glad to see her go; but she wanted 
a few moments to recover herself. This was an 
unexpectedly unpleasant incident, and the girl from 
Hudsonvale shed tears over it — and shed them 
frankly. As the door had closed she had heard a 
muttered “show such girls their place.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE SUNNY SIDE 

“Peek-a-boo 

Beth started from her chair, hastily wiped her 
eyes, and turned to see Molly Granger peering 
in at the door of the passage between the two 
rooms. 

“Oh, my dear!” cried Beth, with half a sob. 
“I thought you had gone.” 

“Did you hear me bang the door?” demanded 
Molly, standing culpritwise before her chum with 
her hands behind her back. “Well! when that 
door is banged it doesn^t latch! There was 
method in my madness.” 

“Goodness !” 

“So you thought I had truly gone and wouldn’t 
hear all that nasty Princess Fancyfoot had to 
say?” 

“Why — why Did you?” 

“Did I what?” asked Molly. 

“Hear her?” 

“I listened,” proclaimed Molly, unblushingly. 
“I glory in the fact. I am an eavesdropper. By 
123 


[124 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

so doing I learned good instead of evil about my- 
self. And I learned something else.” 

Beth was silent. 

“I learned what a perfectly loyal friend you 
are, Beth Baldwin! You are a dear!” and Molly 
flung her arms about the other’s neck and kissed 
her warmly. Beth returned the caress; she had 
never met a girl before whom she found as dear as 
this jolly creature. 

“What a really hateful thing that Maude Grim- 
shaw is!” said the new pupil, after a pause. 

“What did I tell you?” cried Molly. “And so 
sneering! Not that what she says can hurt us. 
Maybe she would have given you a tidy sum to 
jchange rooms with Laura Hedden.” 

Beth laughed and tossed her head. “I’ll get 
money other ways — or go without,” she said. 

“Is it really a fact that you need to earn money 
if you stay here in school ? Are your folks as poor 
as you told Maude?” asked Molly, hesitatingly. 

“I’m all right for a year. But after that — the 
deluge !” Beth replied. 

“Well! that is too far ahead to worry about. 
Lots of things can happen in a year,” agreed the 
happy-go-lucky Molly. “Maybe some rich old 
uncle will die and leave you money.” 

“But there isn’t any rich uncle — nor any uncle 
of any kind,” laughed Beth. 


THE SUNNY SIDE 


125 

“Well! that’s good, too,” declared the optimis- 
tic Molly. “There won’t be any poor uncle, then, 
to come and live on your folks. Always be thank- 
ful!” 

Jolly Molly’s sunny disposition was just the 
tonic Beth needed after her interview with Maude 
Grimshaw. In fact, a naturally serious and 
thoughtful girl like Beth easily found her counter- 
part in Molly Granger. 

“We live on the sunny side of the street,” 
Molly frequently proclaimed. “So why not smile? 
Send dull Grouch flying to the tall timber. ‘Eat, 
drink, and be merry, for to-morrow’ — there are 
lessons 1” 

Which was not literally true, for this was said 
on a Saturday. That day Molly spent in intro- 
ducing her new chum to all the nice girls she knew. 
As, after all, “nice” was a very elastic word with 
Molly Granger, the girls Beth met were of all 
sorts. 

Yet they had one thing in common. They were 
all well dressed. Beth saw plainly that her simple 
wardrobe, prepared by her mother with such ten- 
der care and love, was going to set her a little 
apart from the other girls, and mark her as from 
another world than theirs. Some of the good 
friends of Molly, even, looked askance at Beth’s 
gingham. 


126 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

However, Beth determined to say nothing in 
her letter, which she retired to her own room to 
write, about this condition of affairs. She put 
nothing but love and happiness in the epistle to 
the family at home, although she had overheard 
one girl ask Molly: 

“Say! does she wear that ugly calico because she 
likes it or on a bet?” 

The jolly girl, however, had foreseen the com- 
ments and the amazement of her friends over 
Beth’s plain clothes ; and wherever she could, she 
repeated (and the story lost nothing in her tell- 
ing) the interview Beth had had with Maude 
Grimshaw. 

“That’s the sort of girl Beth Baldwin is,” 
Molly said, out of her new chum’s hearing, of 
course. “She is true blue, she is 1 And it isn’t that 
she doesn’t need the money. She does. She’s 
only got enough to pay for this first year’s school- 
ing, she tells me ; and she is determined to get three 
years at Rivercliff in order to teach. I know she’s 
the kind of girl who will succeed. Most of us 
here at Rivercliff are a lazy pack ” 

“Speak for yourself. Jolly Molly!” cried one. 

“That’s all right, Bertha Pilling. I don’t have 
to hire a prime to come in every morning and put 
a cold key down the neck of my nightgown to get 
me out of bed in time for breakfast,” shot back 


THE SUNNY SIDE 127 

Molly, and the other girls giggled delightedly, for 
Bertha was a lie-abed. 

“At any rate,’* Molly continued, “Beth wants 
to earn all she can toward her next year’s tuition 
in these two semesters.” 

“Why I what can a girl like her do?” demanded 
a senior. “Fancy trying to earn money at River- 
cliff. She might borrow it.” 

“Beth Baldwin isn’t of the borrowing kind,” 
said Molly, staunchly. “She’s earned some money 
this summer. She told me so.” 

“What doing? Picking berries?” cried one 
girl. “She comes from the country, doesn’t she? 
I have a cousin who lives on a farm, and she 
earned six dollars one summer picking berries. 
Her father put enough more to it to pay for a 
piano and Madge is always telling about her piano 
that she earned by picking berries !” 

When the laughter over this story had passed, 
Molly said : 

“Why, Beth Baldwin posed for an artist. She 
told me the woman used her in painting a maga- 
zine cover.” 

“What magazine?” demanded the senior, sud- 
denly diving for the magazine shelf of her study 
table. “I thought I’d seen that face before.” 

“Yes,” said Molly, whimsically. “Beth wears 
her face in front at present.” 


128 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Smartyl Miss Baldwin has rather a striking 
phiz.” 

“Hasn’t she?” cried the enthusiastic Molly. 

“And here she is !” exclaimed another girl, who 
had likewise been going over the magazilies. “No 
mistaking it for anybody else. That’s Miss Bald- 
win, sure enough,” and she showed the cover of 
the magazine so that all could see. 

“How clever I” drawled another girl. “Fancy 
posing for a famous artist.” 

Molly was delighted that she had interested 
these girls — some of the wealthiest in the school — 
in her chum. But a very unpleasant experience 
was to arise out of the event for Beth. That, how- 
ever, was in the future. 

Beth had time in this first very busy day at the 
school to think of Cynthia Fogg; but it was not 
until Sunday morning that she saw the freckled 
girl again. 

On Sunday morning the rising bells rang an 
hour later than on other days. Beth, having en- 
tirely recovered from the weariness caused by her 
journey and her broken sleep on the boat, awoke 
at her usual time — and they had been early risers 
at the little cottage on Bemis Street. Mr. Bald- 
win always went to the locomotive works at half 
past six. 

The sun was just peering above the eastern hills. 


THE SUNNY SIDE 


129 

Beth’s windows faced the south and the farther 
shore of the river. Mist was rising from the sur- 
face of the stream, and the few boats plying up 
and down the current were scarcely outlined in it. 

Up on the bluff the air was clear enough, and the 
banks of red and yellow branches across the river 
were beautiful in appearance. Up-stream Beth 
could see tall pillars of smoke rising through the 
fog from the factory chimneys at Jackson City — 
not as many of them smoking as usual, however, 
because of the day. 

The air was too sharp for her to stand at the 
window for long; she went about her bath and her 
dressing so as not to arouse Molly in the next 
room. She put on the dress she had traveled in. 
She thought she would wear that on Sundays. 
Then she ventured out of her room and along the 
corridors to the front stairway. 

She saw nobody, nor did she hear anybody until 
she had descended to the second floor, and there, 
as she started down the staircase, she heard a 
mighty yawn from the hall below. 

Beth peered over the balustrade. There was 
somebody stirring below and in a moment she 
caught sight of a girl in cap and apron, waving 
a feather-duster at the pictures as though she ex- 
pected, by so doing, to conjure the dust off of 
them. 


530 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Beth went down quietly, intending to go out by 
the front door; but at the bottom of the flight of 
stairs she came face to face with the maid, and 
saw that it was Cynthia Fogg. 

“My aunt!” ejaculated the freckled girl, smil- 
ing as though she really was glad to see Beth. 
“Isn’t this the greatest place you were ever in?” 

'‘I think it’s quite wonderful,” admitted Beth. 

“So many girls ! I never dreamed of so many 
before — never!” laughed Cynthia. 

Beth wondered what kind of asylum it was from 
which Cynthia had run away. 

“How do they treat you, Beth Baldwin?” asked 
the maid, curiously. 

“Oh, very nicely — those to whom I have been 
introduced,” Beth replied. 

“Don’t you find them proud and stuck up at 
all?” was the shrewd query that followed. 

“Well — there may be some who are addicted to 
that sin,” laughed Beth. 

“They tell me there are none but rich girls 
here,” went on Cynthia Fogg. “Philo Grimshaw’s 
daughter is one. Philo Grimshaw, you know, is 
the big soap manufacturer. The Grimshaws never 
let people forget that they have money, and peo- 
ple can never forget how the money is obtained,” 
and Cynthia’s mellow laugh did not sound as kind 
as usual. 


THE SUNNY SIDE 


131 

Beth thought it not right to discuss the char- 
acters of the girls with one of the maids. Per- 
haps Miss Hammersly or the madam would not 
like it So the girl from Hudsonvale said: 

“Do you like the madam, Cynthia?” 

Cynthia looked up from her dusting, and there 
was a queer look on her features. “Hist!” she 
said. “Here she comes. Watch her.” 

Beth had not heard her coming, but looking up- 
ward she saw the madam at the head of the stairs. 
She had not met her since the first evening when 
she and Molly, with Cynthia Fogg, had had their 
interview with her. Now, while Madam Ham- 
mersly was descending the staircase, Beth had a 
better opportunity to scrutinize her. 

She certainly was a very prim old lady. She 
was dressed in rustling silk, every fold of which 
lay just so. Her cap was wonderful in its starchi- 
ness ; the lace at her throat and wrists was beauti- 
ful. In one hand she carried a fine cambric hand- 
kerchief which, now and then as/she descended the 
stairs, she touched to the spindles of the railing 
or flirted into the carvings, glancing at it sharply 
through her eyeglasses to see if any dust lurked 
there. 

Cynthia winked drolly at Beth. “If she catches 
us leaving anything undone,” whispered the 
freckled girl, “good-night I” 


132 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Beth stepped aside, waiting to greet the madanf 
when she reached the hall. The lady greeted her 
with a smile. 

“Good morning, Miss Baldwin. You are an 
early riser,” she said. 

“Yes, Madam. I am used to getting up early. 
May I go out upon the grounds?” Beth asked. 

“Surely. Take a run about the estate. There 
is just frost enough in the air to make it invigor- 
ating.” 

Then, as Beth turned toward the door, she 
heard the madam say to Cynthia ; 

“There is dust on the balustrade. See my hand- 
kerchief, girl? Begin at the top of the flight and 
come down carefully. I will have thoroughness 
from you girls, or I will have nothing.” 

Beth heard Cynthia utter a faint groan. Then 
she slipped out of the door into the open air. 


CHAPTER XIV 


A GREAT DEAL TO LEARN 

Molly Granger possessed at least one talent 
besides the ability to extract fun out of most things. 
She could draw quite remarkably for a girl who 
had had so little instruction ; and made many really 
clever cartoons in black and white. 

Over her dressing-table was a long study in 
feline humor; as Beth called it when she first ob- 
served the piece, “a yard of cats.” 

“Isn’t it cute?” she cried. “You never did it?” 

“Yes, I did. From life,” Molly said, smiling 
at the row of kittens tenderly. 

“From life? Nonsense I How could you get 
cats to pose for you? And they are too, too fun- 
nily human !” 

“Didn’t get the cats to pose. But my aunts did. 
I flatter myself I have hit off the characteristics of 
the dears.” 

“Your aunts?” gasped Beth, horrified. 

“Yes, my dear. All seven of them.” 

“There are seven of the cats,” admitted Beth, 
weakly. “But you never deliberately caricatured 
your aunts like that?” 


133 


134 girls of RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“They’re not caricatures. My aunts are regu- 
lar tabbies, anyway; they don’t mind. They 
begin to look upon my talent for drawing cats as 
a ‘gift.’ You see, Bethesda,” said Molly, laugh- 
ing again now, “I can draw cats, and I can’t draw 
folks. If I ever attempt your portrait, you’ll 
have to appear as a cat. Whatever artistic talent 
I have, I’ll never be a portrait painter. So I told 
the aunts I wanted to draw them in black and 
white, and they all sat for me.” 

Beth was as much amazed as she was amused. 

“The grave looking cat at the end, with spec- 
tacles and a book, is Aunt Celia; the next with the 
knitting and goloshes on her feet is Aunt Cather- 
ine. She always either wears overshoes or carries 
them. Auntie Cora is the cute little blue kitten 
with the fan. 

“Aunt Carrie stands there in her wedding fin- 
ery — she still has hopes. She is engaged to a sea 
captain who comes home for three weeks about 
once in three years. Doesn’t she look too sweet 
for anything? Aunt Charlotte is the sly, plump 
one — you know she’s just lapped up all the cream. 
Aunt Charlotte manages to get the best of every- 
thing. 

“Aunt Cassie is the one in furs and mittens; 
she’s always cold. I believe she’d get chilblains 
in July. On the end is Aunt Cyril — ^you can see 


A GREAT DEAL TO LEARN 135 

she is an aristocrat, the dear! I’m quite proud 
of my aunties — but nobody ever called them a yard 
of cats before,” and Molly giggled. 

Beth Baldwin’s introduction to Rivercliff School 
was not all fun and frolic. On Monday came 
lessons — the beginning of the fall and winter 
semester. Miss Hammersly and her teachers were 
quite firm in their intention of making the students 
of Rivercliff work. And few of them — lazy or 
otherwise — cared to have a monthly report go 
home, across which was printed “defective.” 

Miss Hammersly’s idea was that girls came to 
her to study — and for no other reason. This was 
not a boarding school where the pupils could work 
or not, as they pleased. “Ours is not an institution 
for the encouragement of girls lacking in gray- 
matter,” Miss Hammersly was wont to say. “I 
am very sorry for the defectives; but three such 
reports send them home.” 

Beth found that the working hours of the school 
were fully occupied, and that the recreation hours 
were not long enough for any of the students to 
get very deeply into mischief. 

Even jolly Molly had to repress her super- 
abundant spirits; or rather, after being under the 
ministrations of the instructors of Rivercliff 
School all day, by supper time the most spirited 
girl in the school was subdued. 


136 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Goodness!” confessed Molly to her chum, 
coming wearily into Number Eighty and dropping 
an armful of books on Beth’s study table, “I feel 
like a wornout dishcloth that’s been drawn sixty 
times through a knothole! Miss Carroll has just 
about finished me this time, Beth Baldwin. If I 
don’t get up to-morrow morning, just write my 
seven aunties that I died in a good cause — in an 
attempt to acquire all the knowledge in the world 
within an infinitesimal length of time.” 

“Oh, Molly! it’s not so bad as all that,” Beth 
said, laughing, though rather ruefully, for she 
found the system followed at Rivercliff entirely 
different from that at the Hudsonvale high 
school. Larry had been right. Three years at 
this establishment — if she could keep up — would 
put her a long lap ahead in education. 

Her own end of the table was piled high with 
books, for the two chums studied each evening to- 
gether — and preferably in Number Eighty. 
Eighty-one was too apt to be the Mecca of girls 
who desired to scamp their work and barely get 
through on the monthly reports “by the skin of 
their teeth.” 

“Which is a perfectly proper expression, and not 
slang, Beth Baldwin, no matter what Miss Carroll 
may say,” Molly declared. “Who was it said it — 
Job or the psalmist?” 


A GREAT DEAL TO LEARN 137 

“That is your question — you answer it,” re- 
plied Beth. “But what do you make out of this 
awful passage Miss Felice has given us to con- 
strue? It’s a heart-breaker, isn’t it?” 

They set to work. They were not the only 
studious girls on the corridor; but there was a 
good deal of noise outside, and Beth closed the 
door to shut some of it out. Having retired to 
Number Eighty, Molly hoped her old friends 
would not annoy her. 

“I am determined to delight the aunts this 
year,” Molly said. “I’ve told them I have a new 
chum and that she is studious. Maybe it’s catch- 
ing. 

This evening was within the first fortnight of 
the term. Naturally, Beth had not made many 
friends as yet. The girl who attends strictly to 
her lessons in a boarding school is slower in mak- 
ing friendships than she who is careless of her 
standing on the reports. So the gay ones were 
not apt to come and pound on the door of Num- 
ber Eighty for admittance. 

Not that Beth did not take plenty of recreation. 
Indeed, that was compulsory to a certain extent. 
There was a physical instructor and a splendid 
gymnasium — the latter a handsome building, the 
gift of a wealthy graduate of Miss Hammersly’s 
establishment. 


138 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

There was a splendid athletic field, too, with a 
cinder track, courts for basket-ball and tennis; and 
at the foot of the bluff, which was reached in the 
school wagonette, was a boathouse with a number 
of two, four, and eight-oared shells, as well as 
canoes and a power launch of some size. 

Nothing was neglected that would add to the 
physical development, as well as the mental well- 
being, of the girls. Miss Hammersly did not 
graduate weaklings in any particular. 

Save Maude Grimshaw, such girls as had 
spoken to Beth had been kind. But except Molly 
and a few of her Intimate friends, nobody at River- 
cliff had paid very much attention to her. She had 
been popular in Hudsonvale, and she missed Mary 
Devine and her other schoolmates who had de- 
ferred to her there. 

She did not even have an opportunity of talking 
with Cynthia Fogg, the strange girl who had come 
up to Rivercliff with her on the steamboat. She 
saw Cynthia now and then, going about her du- 
ties. She waited at a neighboring table to Beth’s 
in the dining-room. But there could be no com- 
munication of any extended character between the 
“young lady students” and the maids employed at 
the school. Madam Hammersly’s eye was too 
sharp. 

This night, while Beth and Molly were deeply 


A GREAT DEAL TO LEARN 139 

engaged in their books, both suddenly looked up 
to see an unexpected figure standing in the door- 
way of the passage into Molly’s room. It was that 
of a girl in a kimono with a red bag over her 
head, masking her completely, for there were only 
two little holes in the bag to see through. It was 
a startling apparition, and Molly exclaimed: 

“Cracky-me I How you scared us ! Go away — 
do!” 

The girl behind the mask of turkey-red giggled. 
Then she stalked forward and placed two folded 
red bags, like her own, on the study table. 

“Number Sixty-two. Ten-thirty,” she said, in a 
sepulchral voice, and immediately marched out 
again by the way she had come. 

“Well!” gasped Beth. 

But Molly began to giggle now. “It’s just 
awful — this trying to be a ‘grind.’ My poor, poor 
Bethesda ! your chum’s former reputation is 
against our ever being the twin Minervas of Riv- 
ercliff School.” 

“But what does this mean?” demanded Beth, 
trying on one of the bags. 

“Kimono party — sometimes called red-head 
party. You can see what the bags are for. Un- 
less you are familiar with the kimonos of the whole 
school, you can’t be sure of who is at the party — 
save the legal occupant of the room in which the 


140 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

party is held. And sometimes the girls exchange 
kimonos. So that helps.” 

“Helps! How?” 

“Why, if we are caught, and can run, the 
teacher or monitor who catches us can’t see who 
we are with the bags over our heads. And those 
who are captured can’t tell on the rest, for every- 
body’s masked and we can’t be sure. See?” 

“Are you going to-night?” Beth asked. 

“What number did she say?” rejoined Molly. 

“Sixty-two.” 

“Let’s! That’s Mamie Dunn’s,” cried Beth. 

“Aren’t there two Sixty-twos?” 

“Oh, the kimono parties have to be wing affairs. 
Guests can’t slip over from one wing to the other. 
They have to be localized.” 

“Why?” asked the curious Beth. 

“Why, there’s always somebody on watch at 
the top of the main flight of stairs — and there’s 
no other way to go from wing to wing than by that 
cross-corridor.” 

“On watch all night, do you mean?” 

“Sure. For fire protection; likewise if anybody 
should be taken sick in the night.” 

“I suppose,” said Beth, reflectively, “that these 
after-hours parties are against the rules of the 
school?” 

“I suppose they are,” admitted Molly, with ser- 


A GREAT DEAL TO LEARN 141 

ious mouth but twinkling eyes; “but I never really 
asked.” 

Beth laughed. “Did you ever get caught at one 
of these parties?” 

“Never mind about that! We’ll go to-night. 
All work and no play makes Jill just as dull as her 
brother.” 

“We’ll do our tasks first, dear,” said Beth. 

She was not a prude; but she felt herself in 
honor bound to keep up with all her lessons. She 
had been at Rivercliff long enough to know that 
she could not earn her diploma in any easy way. 
To fall back one recitation would mean hard effort 
to make it up. There were no delays for the slow 
and inattentive under Miss Hammersly. 

Beth, of course, had written home several times. 
She had told the home folk of all the interesting 
things she had encountered thus far in her school 
life, and about her teachers and the students as 
she had met them with the one exception of Maude 
Grimshaw. She had not mentioned that haughty 
and purse-proud girl. Beth hoped she would never 
be obliged to come in contact with Maude again. 
She thought that, by letting her unpleasant neigh- 
bor strictly alone, Maude would let her alone. 

She was yet to learn the fallacy of this belief — 
as well as much else that Beth could never have 
learned anywhere but at Rivercliff School. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE RED MASQUE 

The two chums working in Number Eighty, 
South Wing, Rivercliff School, closed their books 
before the retiring bell rang at nine-thirty, fully 
satisfied with what they had accomplished. 

“No use climbing into bed, Bethesda,” said 
Molly, with a yawn. “Just get into something 
comfortable — of course, your kimono — and we’ll 
put out the lights at the proper time.” 

“Why — will anybody look in?” 

“Perhaps. You never can tell. It is according 
to who is on watch to-night. We never know 
whose duty it is. Miss Crouch is perfectly sneak- 
ing ” 

“Oh, Molly!” 

“Yes, she is. She wears sneaks when she is on 
guard, and she often opens our doors and looks 
in. And if you lock your door she is likely to rap 
on it and wake you up. Says she wants to be sure 
you are all right.” 

“Are we supposed to leave our doors un- 
locked?” Beth asked. 


142 


THE RED MASQUE 143 

“Why, you can do as you please. But if Miss 
Crouch feels like looking into your room in the 
middle of the night, she’ll get you up to open the 
door. She’s a suspicious creature.” 

“For no reason, I suppose?” laughed Beth. 

“Never mind!” Then Molly’s voice dropped 
to a whisper: “I’ll show you how to fool Miss 
Crouch.” 

“What about?” asked Beth. 

“If she should feel it necessary to look in while 
we are gone — see here !” 

Molly rolled the extra blanket which lay upon 
the foot of Beth’s bed into the semblance of a 
human figure and put it under the bedclothes. 
There it looked like a person asleep, wrapped head 
and heels in the coverings. Then she made the 
same masquerade in her own bed. 

They sat in the dark and told each other “gig- 
gly” stories in whispers until it was about half 
past ten and the whole school seemed buried in 
sleep. But there is scarcely anything more uncer- 
tain than a boarding school between retiring hour 
and the first bell in the morning. That is an 
axiom known to all instructors of experience. 

When the two chums ventured out with the red 
bags pulled down to their shoulders, there were 
other “red-heads” flitting about the corridors. 
They slipped in and out of the various doors like 


144 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

red-topped ghosts. It was evidently to be a 
large party in Mamie Dunn’s room. 

“Sh! Who’s on watch?” one unknown asked 
Beth. 

‘‘Oh ! I’m sure I don’t know,” returned the new 
girl, and at once the girl asking the question 
laughed, and said: 

“So you’re the new one, aren’t you? I thought 
I’d know your voice. And now I’ll know your 
kimono.” 

“That’s Stella — didn’t you hear?” said Molly. 
“She caught you.” 

“Oh ! aren’t you supposed to know each other?” 
asked Beth. 

“Just as well if we’re not identified. I’ve got 
on a new kimono. I’m just going to keep it for 
these red-head parties. You get one, and then 
we’ll fool ’em.” 

The question was repeated several times before 
the chums reached Sixty-two : 

“Who’s on watch?” 

“I wager it’s Miss Crouch,” jolly Molly said, 
but nobody would have recognized her voice. 

“Is that you, Phoebe Mills?” 

“No. It’s Phoebe’s sister,” said Molly, sol- 
emnly. “Don’t try to catch me, honey!” 

“Well, if Miss Crouch is on watch or not, I 
dare you to look,” giggled the inquisitive girl. 


THE RED MASQUE 145 

“Not me,” declared Molly, shaking her head 
vigorously. “Get that crazy Molly Granger to 
run and look.” 

“Em looking for her,” admitted the other girl, 
going away from the chums. 

Molly giggled. “What a chance! That was 
Izola Pratt, I believe. She’s a ‘Me too.’ ” 

“You mean one of Maude’s friends?” 

“Just so,” said Molly, nodding. “I wonder why 
they are all trying to identify us ? Maybe Princess 
Fancyfoot has some scheme up her sleeve.” 

“You don’t mean that she would report us To 
the teachers?” asked Beth, In some alarm. 

“Pd like to see her! That would just about 
settle Maude Grimshaw In this school. If her 
father had as much money as King Midas, and 
Maude lived to be as old as Methuselah, she could 
never live down such a thing. No Indeed ! There ! 
here’s SIxty-two.” 

, Beth knew Mamie Dunn, but she did not know 
who welcomed her Into the room. Everybody In 
the apartment wore a red mask, and at first the 
new girl was not able to recognize any one. 

It was a chafing-dish party. A tall girl In a 
striking red and black kimono (somehow Beth 
thought she must be the senior, Miss Teller) — 
the kimono itself well fitted to clothe one who did 
deeds of magic — presided over a cheese dish war- 


146 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

ranted, as Molly said, to give everybody “dreams 
of the rabbit fiend.” 

There was bottled ginger ale and tea and coffee. 
Such a combination to go into one’s stomach at 
such a late hour would ruin the digestion of any- 
body but a boarding-school girl. 

Beth, even at this party, could not but compare 
her own state with that of the other twenty-five 
or thirty girls present. There were all sorts and 
conditions of kimonos ; but all were of very much 
richer material than her own pretty, but cheap, 
cotton crepe. 

She was really sure of the Identity of nobody 
save Molly at first. But she began to enjoy her- 
self, for she was not left alone. She tried to dis- 
guise her voice in answering questions, and so puz- 
zle the others. 

The laughter was subdued, although the walls 
were thick and the doors sound-proof. One girl 
frequently ventured Into the corridor to peer 
about. There was a delicious feeling of uncer- 
tainty and peril that spiced this “red-head” party. 

The guessing of each other’s Identity was a pop- 
ular pastime, and when they held a mock court, 
with the tall girl in the red and black kimono as 
judge, and appointed two guards to bring cul- 
prits before the bar for identification, the fun 
waxed boisterous. 


THE RED MASQUE 147 

Sometimes the girls guessed who the prisoner 
was very quickly; at other times they shot broad 
of the mark, as was attested by the gaiety of the 
one under examination. 

But when Beth was seized and forced before 
the girl in the red and black kimono, there fell a 
little hush of expectation. It seemed to the new 
girl as though many of these present had been 
waiting for just this event. 

“Here is a stranger in our midst,” said the red 
and black kimono, in a sepulchral voice. “Who 
can she be?” 

“It’s plain to be seen she’s a person of note,” 
said one, demurely. 

“And a person of quality,” added a sharp voice. 
“Note the gown she has on. It must have cost 
‘trippence’ a yard, as Miss Small would say,” and 
there was a rising giggle from a group of masks 
in one corner. 

Beth flashed a glance that way. She felt the 
enmity of these masked girls in the very air. Had 
she known how to escape she would have done so 
before the mock examination went any further. 

In that particular group of girls Beth suddenly 
recognized Maude Grimshaw’s blue and silver 
kimono. And it was from the wearer of this beau- 
tiful garment that the next unkind observation 
fell: 


148 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“We are advertised by this young person. Oh ! 
she is an acquisition to Rivercliff, undoubtedly.” 

“You’re not!” snapped Molly Granger’s voice 
from behind Beth. 

But Maude had her speech ready, and was not 
to be sidetracked. 

“I suppose this girl began by being photo- 
graphed as a patent-food baby. Then she adver- 
tised a brand of soap as she grew older, until now 
she has arrived at the dignity of being flaunted in 
seven colors on the cover of a cheap magazine.” 

There was a murmur of objection from some of 
the hooded girls; but there was laughter, too. 

“She will doubtless become famous,” went on 
Maude, scornfully, “and make Rivercliff famous, 
by winding up as the exponent of a toothwash, or 
illustrating the use of a pair of shoulder braces.” 

The whole company was now in ungovernable 
laughter. Beth knew that she should have laughed 
herself had the victim been some other girl. In- 
deed, she could have laughed with them at the 
fun poked at her, had it not been so venomously 
done. 

“Beth Baldwin!” somebody shouted. “Dis- 
covered I She must pay a forfeit.” 

Beth heard Molly sputtering angrily behind her; 
but she realized that if she took offence, or if 
Molly was allowed to do so, it would only make 


THE RED MASQUE 149 

her the more ridiculous. One decision Beth made, 
however, right then and there. It was a decision 
bound to change the tenor of her whole career at 
Riverclilf School. 

“Unmask! You’re caught,” ordered the 
“judge.” 

Beth did so and managed to show a smiling, if 
flushed, countenance to the assembly. 

“Well, I think it’s mighty clever of her,” 
drawled one girl, “if she can earn money posing 
for her picture.” 

The others were, however, clamoring for Beth 
to pay a forfeit. The judge was supposed to ac- 
cept suggestions for that. Maude’s sharp voice 
was ready : 

“Oh, it doesn’t really matter what she does, I 
fancy. As long as there’s anything to be earned 
by it, Miss Baldwin is prepared to do it. Like our 
politicians, she is ‘out for the dough.’ ” 

“How very vulgar, Maude!” said the “judge,” 
tartly. “Suppose Miss Carroll should hear that?” 

“It’s the truth !” snapped the angry girl. “We, 
who are well-to-do, are exploited for the benefit of 
these — these paupers that Miss Hammersly al- 
lows to come here to Rivercliff. At least, she 
should have the decency to put them in a depart- 
ment by themselves, and have their sleeping quar- 
ters with the servants.” 


150 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Shame ! Shame I” cried a dozen voices. 

“You go too far, Maude,” declared the 
“judge.” 

“That’s what is the matter with Maude Grim- 
shaw,” ejaculated Molly, boiling over in her 
wrath, finally. “She wanted Miss Baldwin’s room 
for one of her ‘Me toos’ — and Miss Baldwin 
wouldn’t make that exchange for money. Nasty 
thing!” 

“Girls! stop this!” ordered the girl in red and 
black, rising from her seat. 

Suddenly Mamie Dunn herself took a hand in 
the discussion. She stood up and plucked off her 
red bag. She was a plain, rather unattractive girl 
who seldom asserted herself; but now she was 
quite indignant. 

“Stop, Maude Grimshaw. You are the meanest 
girl in Rivercliff School — I don’t care if you are 
the richest. This is my room and I declare I’ll 
never invite you into it again.” 

She turned swiftly to Beth and put a protect- 
ing arm about her. “You are a girl I am proud to 
have for a friend, Miss Baldwin — I don’t care 
what others may say. I know I wouldn’t have the 
pluck to try to work my way through school, pro- 
viding I could get an education in no other way. 
I — I hope you’ll forgive me for inviting you here 
to-night where you have been so insulted and 


THE RED MASQUE 


151 

abused by my other guests. I assure you, it was 
not with my connivance.” 

“Oh, I am confident of that. Miss Dunn,” fal- 
tered Beth, for Mamie’s kindness touched her 
more deeply than Maude Grimshaw’s unkind 
speech. “I thank you. Miss Dunn. I — I can’t 
stay. I see very clearly now that I should not 
have come in the first place.” 

“Don’t say that!” cried somebody whom Beth 
thought was Brownie, and who was sobbing, 
frankly. 

“Yes,” Beth said, more calmly now, “I see that 
I was wrong in accepting the invitation. I am dif- 
ferent from you other girls. I want to get an edu- 
cation, and I must get it in my own way. My 
way is not yours. I hope that hereafter I shall not 
be led into accepting invitations that lead to fric- 
tion and make everybody concerned unhappy.” 

“You’re all right, Baldwin!” said the girl be- 
hind the judge’s mask, huskily. 

“I am going to ask you. Miss Dunn, to excuse 
me,” Beth proceeded. “I quite appreciate your 
kindness, and all you meant to do for me in invit- 
ing me to your party. But — you see yourself — 
it is not wise.” 

She stammered this — halted at last in her 
speech, chokingly — and then made swiftly for the 
door. 


CHAPTER XVI 


NO martyr's crown 

Beth bolted both the doors, once hfving en- 
tered Number Eighty, and refused to open 
either, though she knew that it must be Molly 
Granger who came and softly tapped upon the 
panel. 

It was some time after Beth had got into bed 
that Molly tried to get in. The party in Mamie 
Dunn’s room could not have immediately broken 
up on Beth’s departure. 

The latter lay quietly in her bed and thought 
matters out, coolly. She did not weep. She real- 
ized that she had done a foolish thing in trying 
to become the comrade of these girls who had so 
much more of this world’s goods than she could 
ever hope to possess. 

“I am different from them all — different, even, 
from Molly,” she told herself. ‘T can keep dear 
Molly’s friendship — I prize it too highly to lose it 
for any cause; but I cannot be even her social 
equal. 

“I have come here with the avowed intention 
of earning part of my expenses. That immedi- 
152 


NO MARTYR’S CROWN 


153 

ately puts me on a different plane from the girls 
who never have to think of money — only how to 
spend it! Maude Grimshaw, hateful as she is, 
is more than half right. My place is with Cynthia 
Fogg. 

“I have a year before me in which to get estab- 
lished here in my proper place. I can be helpful 
to many of these girls. I must be helpful. And I 
must be helpful for money. There are things I 
can do, and that they need done, and for which 
they will willingly pay me. I am not ashamed of 
any decent means to earn money — why should I 
be? 

“Such time as I have aside from the study and 
recitation hours and such physical exercises as I 
need, must be devoted to earning money. Why! 
there are thousands and thousands of girls situated 
just as I am, who are making their way through 
school and college. Just because I happen to be 
in a school for wealthy girls, should make no dif- 
ference. What will be the odds, whether they like 
me or not, a hundred years from now? 

“Nor will I sport thd willow,” declared Beth, 
“nor wear the martyr’s crown ! 

“That Maude Grimshaw is half right on an- 
other point, too. I must do anything — anything 
that is decent — for money. I can’t be too particu- 
lar. 


154 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“I won’t dawdle around here like an abused 
chicken, looking for sympathy. I don’t need sym- 
pathy. What did I come to Rivercliff School for, 
anyway? 

“Why! I came to work — in two ways. I’ve 
taken hold of my lessons all right, I flatter my- 
self,” went on Beth, answering her own question, 
“and now I must think of taking up my other 
branches. I am to take a special course of train- 
ing — learning to make money. I’ll begin to-mor- 
row.” 

And with this resolve she Anally went to sleep, 
and slept soundly. Beth Baldwin was blessed with 
a strain of practical, common sense. 

She could be hurt as easily as most naturally 
reAned girls. She was by no means thick-skinned. 
Only, she could grit her teeth and go at a thing 
that had to be done, and without weeping over it. 

In the morning, almost before Beth had her 
bath and was dressed, Molly burst in — but in no 
jolly mood, as was plain. 

“Oh, my dear 1 Oh, my dear 1” she wailed, seiz- 
ing Beth about the neck. “I haven’t slept half the 
night for thinking of you. That nasty, mean, hor- 
rid Maude Grimshaw ” 

^^And a cup of tea 1” interposed Beth, laughing. 
“No more of that, Molly — if you love me. In the 
language of my younger brothers, ‘forget it!’” 


NO MARTYR’S CROWN 


15^ 

' “But it isn’t to be forgotten. And I told them 
all after you came away last night ” 

“Now, Molly dear, if you tell so much you’ll be 
completely empty and will collapse — sure,” de- 
clared Beth, laughing. 

“But, Beth!” 

“But, Molly 1” mocked Beth. 

“Don’t you care, Beth Baldwin?” cried Molly. 

“If I do, I don’t want to wear the martyr’s 
crown,” and Beth smiled. “Come, my dear! 
.‘What can’t be cured must be endured.’ And it 
had better be endured cheerfully — don’t you 
think?” 

“But it can be cured, I tell you !” cried Molly, 
very much excited. “Do you suppose the really 
nice girls of Rivercliff are going to allow a little 
clique of stuck-up things to insult and abuse a girl 
who has positively done no wrong? We think too 
much of our school itself to allow such a blot to 
stand ” 

“That sounds very fine, dear,” said Beth, 
calmly, “although your metaphor is hazy. And it 
is awfully nice of you and your friends to stand 
up for me. But there is something to be said on 
the other side, I guess.” 

“On whose side — yours?” 

“No. I fancy I have very little standing in the 
premises, when it comes to the facts,” and Beth 


156 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

laughed again, though rather bitterly. “I mean on 
the side of Maude Grimshaw and her crowd.” 

“Oh, them!” sniffed Molly, disgustedly, as well 
as ungrammatically. “What about Princess 
Fancyfoot?” 

“She can claim to hold the welfare of Rivercliff 
quite as high as you and your friends do,” Beth 
said argumentatively. “She believes that the 
school is for a certain class of girls — and for no 
other. And, really, the girls themselves bear out 
her claim, don’t they? Am I not about the only 
poor girl here?” 

“Well, I’m sure!” exclaimed Molly, “I’m not 
rich.” 

“What! with seven aunts to support you?” 
laughed Beth, bound to keep a cheerful tone in all 
the argument. 

“But that has nothing to do with it.” 

“Yes it has. If I were Maude Grimshaw I 
should probably feel just as she does. I am an in- 
terloper. But I am here,” added Beth, with vigor, 
“and I mean to stay and get what I came to River- 
cliff for.” 

“Hurrah!” cried Molly. “Then you will fight 
’em?” 

“Fight? Certainly not. I have no reason to. 
I tell you, dear, that I was in the wrong — besides 
being in wrong ! I should not have gone to Miss 


NO MARTYR’S CROWN 


157 

Dunn’s party. I tell you I am not one of you, and 
cannot be one of you, save in my standing in 
classes.” 

“Oh, Beth! What do you mean?” wailed 
Molly. 

“I am going to keep to myself — ‘flock together,’ 
as it were,” and again Beth laughed, and this time 
quite cheerfully. “No, no, Molly! It’s of no use 
to try to get me into your class in society. I 
should merely be a ‘hanger-on’ — and I should posi- 
tively hate myself for such sycophancy. 

“Let me be myself. I am poor; no getting 
around it. Girls from whom I hope to earn money 
won’t treat me as their equal. At least, not these 
girls at Rivercliff, for the true feeling of ‘equality 
in knowledge’ has never become a tenet of this in- 
stitution, as it has in so many colleges.” 

“Goodness!” cried Molly. “You mean we are 
a school of snobs?” 

“Very near it! very near it!” returned Beth, 
allowing herself some small display of malice for 
the moment. “But, yet, you are not to be 
blamed.” 

“I am sure, Beth Baldwin, you cannot accuse 

me ” began Molly, when Beth swooped down 

upon her, seized her in her arms, and cried: 

“Don’t be hurt, dear! You are the lovingest 
girl that ever lived. But you are not ‘the whole 


158 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

push,’ as Marcus would say. You mean well, 
and you could influence some of the other girls, I 
know; but I would merely cause a schism in the 
school if I went your way.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“A few of your nice girls would always be tak- 
ing up cudgels for me. That would cause friction 
and do me more harm than good. I must quietly 
withdraw from too much publicity. Let me go my 
own placid way. I positively will not accept any 
invitations to private parties of any kind,” and 
Beth laughed. “Never again!” 

“Oh, Beth! That’s just what we intended to 
do. Every girl that likes you agreed to invite you, 
one after another, to little parties, and so show 
those stuck-up things that you were more and more 
popular.” 

‘ “I thought so I” exclaimed Beth, and she smiled 
through her tears now. “It is very lovely of 
you — and of your friends. But I am going to ex- 
cuse myself from all such affairs. Yes, I mean it. 
This is my room. Those girls who like me can 
always find me here at a proper time. But I shall 
make it a rule to attend no other private social 
‘orgies.’ ” 

“Oh, Beth!” wailed Molly, again. “You are 
shutting yourself off from everything!” 

“Oh no, dear.” 


NO MARTYR’S CROWN 


159 


“Oh yes, you will I” 

“No. I shall not be shutting myself off from 
the most necessary thing in my life here at River- 
cliff School,” Beth declared firmly. 

“For pity’s sake! what is that?” 

“Work. If I am not socially connected with 
any clique of girls I shall stand a better chance of 
getting work from all.” 

“Cracky-me! What work?” gasped Molly. 

“You didn’t think I was in earnest 1” cried Beth. 

“But — but — you have a whole year to think of 
work.” 

“No. I have a whole year — or, almost — to 
earn what I need for next year. I must take op- 
portunity by the forelock, for he will certainly be 
shaved close for me behind. A regular ‘Riley cut,’ 
to quote my slangy brother again. I must not 
let the first opportunity get by me.” 

Nevertheless, this expected and much longed- 
for opportunity, did not at once appear, as Beth 
hoped. She proved to her own satisfaction, how- 
ever — and in time to Molly’s — that her attitude 
toward the other girls was the wiser one. 

She refused every invitation that came to her, 
explaining quietly why in each case. If the girls 
wanted her, they were welcome in her room dur- 
ing the short time in the day when visiting back 
and forth was permissible. 


i6o GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Many learned to like her — some to admire her 
— in that first month of school. Some offered help 
that Beth could not accept; but they meant it 
kindly. Some few had suggestions that led to the 
new girl earning small sums; but nothing regu- 
larly. 

Indeed, it was her own bright mind and thought 
that opened the first really broad path to a certain 
independence. She seized this opportunity by its 
forelock at the first monthly social evening of the 
whole school, arranged by Miss Hammersly. 

All through the school year these monthly so- 
cials in the huge drawing-rooms were the principal 
events of the kind. There was music and dancing 
and a collation. Sometimes there were visitors. 
The girls looked forward to the parties with de- 
light. 

And as she sat in her pretty poplin in the great 
reception hall, quite popular enough, she thought, 
Beth had an idea. This season skirts were worn 
Very short, but the high boots had not come in. 
As she glanced up the stairway she had a continual 
panorama of silk-clad ankles, as the girls tripped 
up and down. 

She already had heard some of the girls com- 
plain of the hard wear their silk stockings re- 
ceived. Every girl in the school (including 
herself) wore some quality of silk hose. The pair 


NO MARTYR’S CROWN 


i6i 


she had on were darned; but so neatly that it 
would have taken very close inspection to discover 
the mended place. 

That was one thing Mrs. Baldwin had taught 
Beth — how to darn neatly. She sat now, with the 
music and confusion about her, and an endless pro- 
cession of silk stockings paraded before her mental 
vision. 

The very next day she sent off for silks of all 
shades, needles, stocking feet of good quality, and 
other necessities, and in a week she put Molly’s 
artistic ability to the test. Molly demurred at 
first ; then she entered into the idea hopefully. She 
did her very best in lettering the card Beth tacked 
up outside of Number Eighty: 

SILK STOCKING HOSPITAL 
Major ^ Minor Operations Performed 

“Well, there’s some fun in thatf^ admitted the 
jolly one. “At least, the sign will make ’em 
laugh.” 

But Beth looked for more serious returns than 
mere amusement. 


CHAPTER XVII 


FLINT AND STEEL 

Meanwhile letters had passed frequently be- 
tween Beth and the little cottage on Bemis Street, 
Hudsonvale. Ella was Beth’s most frequent cor- 
respondent The flyaway sister was eager to learn 
every particular about Beth’s new environment. 

But Beth was very careful to say nothing in her 
letters to those at home to lead them to suspect 
that all was not fair sailing for her at Rivercliff. 
Having resolved to bear bravely such trials as she 
had, Beth was not the girl to weaken. 

She was glad to get the home letters, and those 
from Mary Devine and the other girls; but the 
letter that secretly pleased her most came from 
Larry Haven. 

To her surprise she had learned that Larry, 
immediately after she had departed for school, 
had taken up his old habit of dropping in fre- 
quently at the Baldwin cottage. 

Ella’s letters were full of “Larry says this” and 
“Larry did that” when he was at the house last. 
Beth knew he had obtained clients almost at once. 


FLINT AND STEEL 163 

He even would try a case — his maiden case — at 
the October Court. 

So his letter, when it came, did not surprise 
Beth; and it was evidently written in the first exub- 
erance of his victory. 

*Hail to the chief who in triumph advances 

Who falls off his saddle whenever his steed 
prances '' 

the letter began. ^In hoc signo vincesf likewise 

plurihus Vnum^ and all hands around ! I have 
arrived. Believe me, Mrs. Euphemia Haven’s 
son is being congratulated on the street by the 
Elders. 

“A certain man in our town. Who was not won- 
drous wise. Jumped into a legal bramble bush. 
And scratched out both his eyes. I made him see 
his eyes were out. So, with all his might and main. 
He jumped into another bush. And scratched them 
in again I 

“That, my dear Beth Baldwin, is the sole and 
only meaning of ‘going to law.’ A man goes mad 
and runs, frothing at the mouth, to another chap, 
to whom the law schools and local bar have given 
the right to separate him from his money without 
giving laughing-gas. Old Coldfoot, next door to 
me, is lots nicer to his victims than I am. 

“Well, the chap with the sheepskin shows the 


1 64 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

mad man a perfectly obvious thing to do — and 
charges him for the advice ; and he collects a sec- 
ond fee when thirteen other men tell the mad man 
the obvious thing is correct. 

“This is what I have done, Beth Baldwin. Con- 
gratulate me ! All hands think it is wonderful. So 
it must be. And I feel that I should have been 
broken-hearted if the other side had beaten us. 

“Oh ! I was scared before the issue. I thought 
I must go to extremes to convince the jury that the 
other side hadn’t a leg to stand on. I prepared a 
very touching appeal in which I should have beg- 
ged the jury for mercy and the Court for clem- 
ency for my client, as though he were convicted 
of a capital crime. 

“In the end — oh! let me confess it — our op- 
ponent’s witnesses made out our case for us. I put 
in no testimony but our answer, got up and said 
ten words, the jury did not leave its seats, and 
the good old judge congratulated me upon having 
more sense than most fledgling lawyers because I 
did not insist upon making a speech. 

“Honestly, Beth, I was greatly relieved when 
it was all over. They say I have won my spurs ; 
but I don’t think the rowels are very sharp yet.” 

There was more to the jolly letter and Beth 
read it over and over again. She was delighted to 


FLINT AND STEEL 


165 

hear from Larry; she was delighted, too, to know 
that he had succeeded in winning his first case. 
Still she wondered. Why had Larry been silent 
and kept away from the house during the summer, 
and now had become such a steady visitor at the 
Bemis Street cottage? 

She knew she had her parents’ sanction to write 
to Larry, and she did so in reply to his letter. She 
told him much about the school and Molly, and 
something about the other girls. She wrote of 
what she studied and how she took hold of ath- 
letics. But one thing she did not mention. She 
said nothing about the “Silk Stocking Hospital.” 
She was not ashamed of working to earn money 
for her schooling; yet, somehow, she shrank from 
discussing that point with Larry. 

The hospital, so-called, had become an estab- 
lished institution long before the holidays. Beth 
sometimes found it difficult to keep up with the 
principal activities of her school life — her lessons, 
the compulsory athletic work, and her stocking 
darning. 

Miss Hammersly was sharper with her, Beth 
thought, than with the other girls, for the very 
reason that Beth was striving to do extra work. 

“I want to see you succeed. Miss Baldwin,” 
the principal said to her on one occasion; “but 
in earning money for your tuition, you must not 


1 66 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


lose any of the advantages which the mpney is 
supposed to pay for. I approve of your attempt 
at independence only in so far as you neglect no 
lessons or other activities that a normal school- 
girl is supposed to obtain in an establishment of 
this kind. You must retain your interest in every 
item of school life and work, or your course here 
will fail of its end.” 

Beth took this advice to heart. She neglected 
nothing which she believed was for her mental or 
physical benefit. With Molly she won a place on 
the Second Five at basketball; and before Christ- 
mas week she had proved herself the superior of 
most of the girls on the ice. 

The river was frozen from the docks to the 
bend soon after Thanksgiving, and now Beth and 
Molly Granger usually ran down the bluff and 
spent the hours between daylight and dark, and 
before supper, on their skates. Molly admitted 
the exercise woke her up after the long day in 
classes and gave her spirit for the study hour be- 
fore bedtime. 

Beth was not allowed to sit up later than the 
other girls, so she usually disappeared right after 
supper and sat in Number Eighty, working, with 
her darning-basket beside her, until the half past 
eight bell. Then she joined Molly in studying for 
the next day’s recitations. 


FLINT AND STEEL 


167 

She lost that general social hour between supper 
and the first bell; so it was true her personal ac- 
quaintanceship among her fellow students did not 
rapidly expand. Yet many came to her for help 
in the “hosiery department.” 

“That Baldwin girl in the South Wing darns so 
nicely,” one girl said to another. “Why throw 
these perfectly good stockings away?” 

“What is it some philosopher said?” Beth asked 
her chum, laughingly. “If a man does some one 
thing better than anybody else, the world will 
beat a path to his door?” 

“Yes,” grunted Molly. “But how about the 
man who goes in for raising skunks? Guess the 
world will beat it the other way from his door, 
won’t it?” 

It was not that Beth deprived herself of all 
social intercourse with her fellows, but she would 
not be tempted to ,jTqt herself forward or be led 
into situations where girls of Maude Grimshaw’s 
type could snub her. Since that unlucky night of 
the first red masque of the term, Beth had been 
able to escape Maude’s particular notice. 

Yet Maude sat directly opposite Beth at table. 
The meals at Rivercliff School were social to a 
degree. The girls filed into the dining room in 
perfect order and were seated. At once a hum 
of conversation arose. The big dining room 


1 68 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


sounded like a hive of bees. There was no at- 
tempt by the teachers or monitors to quench cheer- 
ful talk and moderate laughter; but even the 
primes in their corner could not be boisterous. 

Maude Grimshaw gave many exhibitions of her 
boorishness; but usually such occurrences escaped 
the notice of the teachers. Having put Beth in 
what the rich girl considered “her place,” Maude 
did not trouble herself further about the girl from 
Hudsonvale. 

Sometimes the waitresses came in for a taste of 
Miss Grimshaw’s sharp tongue. She seemed to 
have taken a special dislike to Cynthia Fogg, pos- 
sibly because she believed Beth to be a friend of 
the freckled girl’s, or because the latter had a per- 
fectly detached and untroubled way of receiving 
Miss Grimshaw’s strictures. 

Beth once heard Maude say to Laura Hedden: 

“I even dislike the face of that Fogg girl — 
‘Cynthie,’ do they call her? Do you know, she 
has the impudence to look like a very dear friend 
of mine.” 

“It can’t be!” drawled Laura. “That wait- 
ress?” 

“Yes. She really does look something like Miss 
Freylinghausen. You’ve heard of the Freyling- 
hausens, of course. Emeline is an heiress half 
a dozen times over. She is traveling in Europe 


FLINT AND STEEL 


169 

just now. Oh ! we are very good friends. An old 
Philadelphia family, you know, the Freylinghaus- 
ens. One of the very oldest.” 

So Beth thought that perhaps Cynthia’s un- 
fortunate resemblance to the heiress of the Frey- 
linghausen millions was rather a drawback. 
Maude evidently did her best, on every occasion, 
to be unpleasant to this particular waitress. 

One evening at supper she called across the 
table to Beth and Molly, who sat side by side : 

“Say! one of you see if you can wake up that 
dummy behind you and get some butter passed this 
way. It’s a shame how inattentive that girl is!” 

“Whom are you speaking of?” demanded 
Molly, coolly. 

“Oh, I forgot! She is a friend of a friend of 
yours. Miss Granger,” rejoined Maude, sneer- 
ingly. “I mean that big-footed dummy standing 
there — in a fog, of course, as usual.” 

Laura Hedden and one or two other “Me toos” 
giggled. Beth could not see Cynthia, but her own 
face flushed. Maude looked scornfully across the 
table, taking in all three of the girls she disliked 
in this glance. 

“I believe you are the very meanest girl wLo 
ever walked on sole-leather!” exclaimed Molly, 
but quite low, so that none of the teachers would 
hear. “If I were Cynthia I’d box your ears.” 


170 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Fd like to see her try it!” cried Maude, her 
pale face turning red, as it did in a very ugly 
fashion whenever she was angry. -‘Fd teach her 
her place ” 

“Are you sure. Miss Grimshaw, that you can 
teach me anything?” Cynthia’s low, cultivated 
voice broke in, and she laughed, as though the 
rich girl’s spitefulness only amused her. 

“How dare you speak to me?” demanded 
Maude, starting up. “I’ll report you for this.” 

“And if you dare. Miss Grimshaw,” said Beth, 
quietly, “I shall tell madam just what you said 
to her.” 

“So will I,” broke in Molly, eagerly. “And 
glad to do it !” 

Maude hesitated, then sat down. She knew 
that with two against her no story she could tell 
the madam would hurt Cynthia Fogg. 

“Well, anyway,” she grumbled, at last, “let 
her pass the butter.” 

At that there was general, if subdued, laughter 
all about the table; for most of the girls had heard 
a part of the controversy. For some time there- 
after, whenever Maude Grimshaw threatened to 
fly into one of her tantrums, somebody would be 
sure to say : 

“Well, anyway, let her pass the butter 1” 


CHAPTER XVIII 


ANOTHER BARRIER 

Beth went home to Hudsonvale for the winter 
holidays, which lasted till the middle of the first 
week in the new year. Molly went with her on 
the train, as, of course, navigation on the river 
had ceased, keeping on to Hambro — and the seven 
aunts — farther down the stream. 

Beth was delighted to see her father and mother 
and the children. And many of her old school- 
mates beside Mary Devine came to see her. 

But she did not see Larry. She had heard 
from him again, after that first letter; and he had 
told her he would be away over the holidays. 
Mrs. Euphemia had expressed a sudden wish to 
go to Old Point Comfort and had insisted that 
Larry go with her. 

“And what the Mater says, goes,” he had writ- 
ten to Beth. “She’s been awfully good to me — 
especially since I came home from the law school. 
Why! I never could have afforded such a fancy 
office if it hadn’t been for her. She’s bribed me 
to take this trip; but I don’t really see how the 


172 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

local bar is going to get along without me for a 
fortnight or three weeks.” 

Nevertheless, Beth felt distinctly disappointed 
that Larry was not in Hudsonvale.. There was 
something lacking in her holiday. 

She had but one other source of worriment. 
And that she was not sure should be a worriment. 

She noticed that her father was thinner, grayer, 
and that his walk seemed to have less springiness. 
She asked him if he did not fell well, and he 
laughed at her. Yet the laugh was not convincing. 

She would not whisper to her mother or to the 
other children her fears for him. Mr. Baldwin 
had always been a thin and wiry man — one of the 
kind, as he often said, that wears out, but does not 
rust out. 

The holidays, however, were gay. Besides a 
party given for her young friends by her mother 
on Christmas Eve, Beth went to the usual mid- 
winter ball at the Town House — a very popular 
affair, indeed. She wore the poplin, and she 
danced many times with the men and boys who re- 
membered her from the night of Larry Haven’s 
“coming out” party. 

There was one little thing that, strangely 
enough, rather marred Beth’s enjoyment of the 
evening. She had never put on her pretty frock 
at Rivercliff without wishing that she had her 


ANOTHER BARRIER 


173 

Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals to wear; and 
now she suggested to her mother that she be given 
a second chance to display her heirloom. 

Mrs. Baldwin suddenly looked troubled — ex- 
ceedingly troubled. Hesitatingly, she said: “My 
daughter, I do not think it would be wise. You 
are really too young to wear such things yet. It 
caused, I believe, some comment before.” 

Beth laughed. She would not show her mother 
how deeply she was disappointed. “I guess it’s 
because Mrs. Haven or Larry will not be there, 
isn’t it? You wanted to show me off before them. 
Now confess. Mother mine!” 

Her mother seemed unable to laugh at this 
pleasantry. But Beth cheerfully put Larry’s pres- 
ent into the lace at her bosom and went to the 
ball. No taxicab this time, although there was 
snow on the ground. She carried her slippers, like 
most Hudsonvale people, under her arm. 

The holidays slipped away and Beth soon 
boarded the train again, finding jolly Molly 
Granger, by agreement, in one of the parlor cars. 
Molly had a warm invitation for Beth to spend a 
part of the summer vacation at Hambro. 

“We’ll neither of us get home at Easter, you 
know,” Molly declared. “It’s too far to travel, 
and the time’s too short. And, as I tell the aunt- 
ies, we’ve got to work.” 


174 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“I shall have to work, that is sure,” proclaimed 
Beth. “I’m afraid I spent too much money for 
Christmas presents. Oh dear!” 

“How much money have you earned alto- 
gether?” demanded the curious Molly. 

“I wouldn’t dare tell you. It might arouse your 
cupidity. And there’s only a door between us at 
school,” laughed Beth. “But I’ll tell you this: 
I put twenty-five dollars in the postal savings bank 
at Rivercliff before we came away.” 

“Oh, cracky-me! What a lot!” cried Molly. 
“You’ll be a millionairess yet.” 

“Not much, considering what I shall have to 
earn before next fall when Rivercliff opens again. 
We have to pay half the year’s fees in advance, 
you know.” 

“I suppose it does mean a lot of work for you. 
My! the aunties think you are wonderful to do 
it.” 

“Haven’t done it yet,” sighed Beth. “But I 
hope to.” 

“Oh, I hope we’ll both have a better half year 
this time than the last.” 

Beth looked forward with equal hope, too; but 
it proved to be dashed within the month. Her 
fears for Mr. Baldwin were realized. Her 
mother wrote that he was ill. 

Beth was in some suspense for several days. 


ANOTHER BARRIER 


175 

for the Information at first was very meager. But 
finally she learned the particulars. Her father had 
been taken with a hemorrhage In the shops — a 
strain had brought on the attack, the doctors said. 
But the trouble was deeper than that. 

“He must stop all Indoor work for months — 
perhaps he can never go back to the Locomotive 
Works,” Mrs. Baldwin wrote. “It is a sad loss; 
of course, they will not hold his situation open. 
They never do, no matter how long or how faith- 
fully a man has worked for that corporation. 

“My dear, you must make the most of this 
year’s schooling that we have paid for. I am 
afraid it will be your last. You cannot look for- 
ward to being a teacher, my poor dear. Marcus 
has already got a situation — ‘job,’ he calls it. He 
Insisted. He declares he is going to be the man of 
the house till papa gets well. 

“I am sorry for you. Daughter — after all your 
high hopes. But there must be some good reason 
for it and He will not put upon our shoulders a 
harder trouble than we can bear.” 

Beth could not agree with this doctrine of her 
mother’s. Either she was not sufficiently ortho- 
dox, or she had a clearer vision. She knew her 
father had been warned years before by physicians 


176 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

that his work was not suited to his constitution. 
And Mr. Baldwin had made no attempt to change 
it. 

“It isn’t fair,” thought the young girl, “to lay 
it on God. I could not believe that He is love, 
if we suffered such trouble because He willed it. 
We have brought it on ourselves — and I guess it’s 
our work to hustle around and get the best of this 
trouble. Poor papa !” 

She wasted no time in useless worry. First of 
all, she drew fifty dollars from the bank and sent 
it home. 

“I will not be behind brave, little Marcus,” she 
wrote her mother. “I want you to use this. I can 
earn more — a lot more. And I’ll earn all I can 
before I come home for the summer.” 

She confided in nobody but Molly — and to her 
under promise of secrecy. Beth shrank from the 
casual sympathy of others. Sympathy of that 
quality is so apt to be mixed with curiosity. 

Molly was heart-broken. “Beth Baldwin! 
you’ll never leave Rivercliff before your three 
years are finished — never! Don’t tell me such a 
horrid thing!” 

“I don’t see how it can be helped,” her chum 
said. “It is a dreadful blow to my hopes. Don’t 
say much about it, Molly dear, or I shall cry.” 

Molly was already frankly sobbing. She ran 


ANOTHER BARRIER 


177 

into her own room and came back again in a mo- 
ment with her purse. The contents of this she 
dumped into Beth’s lap. 

“There!” she sobbed. “You can have all I’ve 
got — only say you’ll stay. There’s most as much 
as you sent home. I’ll willingly go without bon- 
bons and ice-cream sodas and furbelows and all 
the rest of it, if you’ll take it, dear, and say you’ll 
stay the three years out. I’ll give you all my 
pocket money I” 

“You dear goosie!” cried Beth, hugging her 
closely in her arms. “Oh 1 how glad I am that I 
have such a friend. But I can’t take your money, 
Molly. It would be right for neither you nor 
for me. You need bonbons and furbelows just 
as much as I need money for other expenses. No, 
no, dear 1 ‘Take back thy gold 1’ I am Independ- 
ent Elizabeth — and you must not tempt me.” 

Resolved, as before, to earn all the money pos- 
sible, Beth did not neglect her studies. Even Miss 
Hammersly had to admit that her standing aver- 
aged better and better as the months went on. 
She was among the few first students in the so- 
called freshman class. 

In Easter week Beth made seventeen dollars 
by mending and repairing lace and silk hose. The 
news that one of the girls did fine mending spread 
outside of the school. Between Rivercliff School 


178 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

and the town of Jackson City was a suburban dis- 
trict occupied by many wealthy and well-to-do peo- 
ple. Some orders began to come to Beth from 
these households. 

The girl sent for a special thread and began to 
make a specialty of repairing the fine lingerie of 
her more fortunate fellow students. And this 
work increased steadily. 

Saturday afternoon at Rivercliff was always 
free. Beth, as the spring advanced, began to re- 
fuse to spend this holiday with Molly and her 
friends. “Four whole hours to myself !” she pro- 
claimed to her disappointed chum. “I cannot spare 
them, my child. I must make hay while the sun 
shines.” 

“But the sun isn’t shining to-day,” said Molly, 
pouting. 

“The more reason, then, that I should get my 
cured hay in the barns,” declared Beth, with a 
grim little nod. “‘Avaunt! Avaunt! I scorn thy 
gold, likewise thy pedigree; I am betrothed to 
Ben-ja-min, who sails upon the sea,’ ” quoted Beth 
from a burlesque verse that they were fond of. 
“Tempt me not, I tell you.” 

And on this very Saturday afternoon something 
happened that made Beth very glad she had re- 
mained in her own room, working. A pair of 
very plump bay horses, drawing an old-fashioned 


ANOTHER BARRIER 179 

family carriage, came to the main door of the 
school, and a footman as fat as the horses, who sat 
beside the coachman fatter still, got stiffly down 
and puffed up the steps. 

He bore a card which he gave to Miss Small, 
who chanced to be in the hall at the moment. The 
card read: 


Mrs. Ricardo Severn 

‘‘Does Miss Baldwin live here?” asked the fat 
footman, asthmatically. 

“There is such a student,” the under house- 
keeper said, wonderingly. 

“My missus sent me for her,” said the man, 
blinking sleepily. 

“Mrs. Severn?” repeated Miss Small. 

“Oh! who does Mrs. Severn want?” cried 
Maude Grimshaw, who chanced to be passing 
through the hall and saw the footman’s gorgeous 
livery, as well as heard the lady’s name mentioned. 

She came swiftly to the under housekeeper’s side 
and whispered: “Mrs. Severn is the e-nor-mously 
rich old lady who lives on the Boulevard, in the 
stone house, with the parrot and a whole raft of 
servants. Who does she want, dear Miss Small?” 

“Miss Baldwin,” puffed the footman, gloomily. 

“Oh!” gasped Maude, taken aback. Then her 


i8o GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


venomous tongue came to her rescue: “Of course ! 
She has heard that one of the girls of Riverclilf 
goes out to service, I presume,” and she went 
away, laughing scornfully. 

But Miss Small sent Mrs. Severn’s card up to 
Beth’s room. However, Maude wrote home that 
day and told about the ridiculous way in which 
Miss Hammersly was allowing “a pauper girl 
named Beth Baldwin to go out to work by the 
day like a common servant.” 

As it chanced, Maude’s equally light-headed 
mother read this part of her foolish daughter’s 
letter to a caller. That caller made inquiries and 
learned that Beth came from Hudsonvale. She 
knew Mrs. Euphemia Haven of Hudsonvale — 
had recently met her at Old Point Comfort. 

Immediately, this mutual friend wrote Mrs. 
Haven what Maude had written to her mother. 
And something came of that! 


1 


CHAPTER XIX 

MR. DENNIS MONTAGUE 

Molly Granger had not left Number Eighty- 
one when the maid knocked at her chum’s door 
with Mrs. Severn’s card and the message. Beth 
was not only surprised, but uncertain as to what 
she should do. 

'“What is it?” whispered Molly, very curious. 
“A visitor?” 

“Who is Mrs. Ricardo Severn?” 

“Oh I I know who she is,” cried Molly. “Such 
fun ! Doesn’t she want you to come down to the 
carriage?” 

“No. To go to her house, so the footman 
said,” explained the maid. “Mrs, Severn isn’t 
in the carriage.” 

“But who is she?” repeated Beth Baldwin. 

“Just the oddest person you ever saw,” Molly 
cried. “You must go, Beth.” 

“But, why?” 

“She’s got something for you to do, of course,” 
Molly said. “And depend upon it, it will be work 
that pays well. They say Mrs. Severn’s house is 

i8i 


1 82 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


just crowded with beautiful things. She’s heard 
of you through Mrs. Pepper — you know, the 
woman who brought you the baby’s lace dress to 
mend that the puppy tried to eat up.” 

“Query : Did the puppy try to eat up the dress, 
the baby, or Mrs. Pepper?” demanded Beth, sol- 
emnly. 

“Never mind splitting scholastic hairs,” cried 
Molly. “You must go !” and she hurried Beth 
into her coat and tam-o-shanter. 

When Beth saw the old-fashioned carriage, she 
laughed to herself. It was queer. But she noted 
that the upholstering of the carriage was very ele- 
gant, indeed, and that the vehicle swung on be- 
hind the fat horses in a very easy fashion. 

She was solemnly deposited at the big stone 
house on the Boulevard within a short space of 
time. The big footman presented her at the front 
door where a second footman, in still more gor- 
geous livery, passed her into the house and up the 
first flight of stairs. 

Here a maid received Beth, looked her over 
carefully as though she feared the girl might have 
dynamite concealed about her person, and doubt- 
fully announced her as “Miz Baldwig.” 

The great room into which Beth was ushered — 
really a suite of rooms which had been thrown 
into one vast apartment — tapered away from a 


MR. DENNIS MONTAGUE 183 

first appearance of dim grandeur to a sunny point, 
where sat a huge old woman, in a huge morris 
chair, with her gouty feet in huge slippers on a 
stool, while a green and red parrot, hanging up- 
side down from its perch, was in a big gilded cage 
in the bow window. 

Mrs. Severn was a broad-faced woman, with 
several small wens on her cheeks, who would have 
been very coarse-featured, indeed, had it not been 
for the cheerful smile with which she welcomed 
Beth. 

But she could welcome her in no other way at 
first, for as the girl marched down the long room 
the parrot, still upside down, sang out ; 

“Here comes the bride !” and then, in the shrill- 
est possible whistle, and much out of tune, vented 
the Bridal March in a most deafening fashion. 

Beth could see that its mistress was trying to 
quiet the parrot. She could see Mrs. Severn’s lips 
move, and a frown came upon her brow, above 
which both her “false front” and her cap were 
awry. 

Finally, losing all patience, she seized a handy 
cushion and flung it with evidently practised hand 
at the parrot’s cage. The bird broke off short in 
his whistling. 

“Drat you, Mr. Montague! Shut up!” cried 
Mrs. Severn. 


1 84 GIRLS OF'RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Shut up yourself — and see how you like it,” 
croaked the parrot; but he desisted after that and 
his mistress and Beth could talk. 

“Mercy!” was the lady’s first comment as Beth 
stood before her. “You are only a child!” 

“But grown-up folks are not taught at River- 
cliff School, Mrs. Severn,” Beth returned, with a 
smile. 

“I suppose that is so,” agreed Mrs. Severn, 
laughing. “But they say you are quite wonderful 
at mending.” 

“Oh, no,” Beth replied. “Only painstaking.” 

“Why! I guess that must be wonderful in this 
day and generation,” and the lady smiled one of 
her rare smiles again. “How pretty you are, 
child.” 

“Thank you, Mrs. Severn.” 

“I had much your style of looks and figure when 
I was your age, my dear,” said Mrs. Severn, com- 
placently. 

Beth trembled. Then she remembered that, by 
no possibility, was there any blood relationship 
between her and Mrs. Severn, so there was hope 
that she might not, in the end, acquire the good 
lady’s present personal appearance. 

“I did not know that any of the students of 
Rivercliff had gumption enough to do anything use- 
ful,” went on Mrs. Severn, nodding her head. 


MR. DENNIS MONTAGUE 185 

“Take a seat, my dear. Don’t come too near my 
gouty foot. Gout runs in our family — and we date 
back to William the Conqueror.” 

“Oh! the noble Duke of York — he had ten 
thousand men!” began the parrot, as though feel- 
ing that something was expected of him to sub- 
stantiate his mistress’ appeal to ancient history. 

“Shut up, Mr. Montague!” commanded Mrs. 
Severn. Then to Beth: “He is a dreadfully saucy 
bird. His full name is Mr. Dennis Mon- 
tague ” 

“Dennis MuddI Dennis Mudd!” shrieked the 
parrot. 

“There ! that wicked nephew of mine taught him 
that. Roland Severn has no regard for the dig- 
nity of our family name and history, and Mon- 
tague ” 

“Piffle!” growled the parrot, still swinging up- 
side down. 

Secretly, Beth thought the parrot and the 
nephew were probably both right. But she, never- 
theless, liked Mrs. Severn. The lady proceeded 
to show Beth that she approved of her at once. 

“Now, I want your time each Saturday after- 
noon — oh, for some weeks. Until the end of this 
term, at least,” said the lady. “I have a number 
of table-throws and bureau scarfs and the like, 
made in the Irish convents, and the carelessness 


1 86 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

of my maid in putting them aside and having them 
laundered by people who did not know their busi- 
ness, has almost ruined some of the pieces. It is 
very particular work.” 

“Perhaps I cannot suit you on such fine work, 
Mrs. Severn,” said Beth. “But I will try, if you 
like.” 

“That is the right answer,” declared Mrs. Sev- 
ern, gaily. “From what Mrs. Pepper showed me 
I know you will suit.” 

“Thank you.” 

“And you will give me each Saturday after- 
noon?” 

“Yes — until supper time. We have to report 
at that hour unless we have a special permit from 
Miss Hammersly.” 

“Very strict, is she?” asked Mrs. Severn. 

“Oh, yes. She has to be, with two hundred girls 
under her care.” 

“Quite so. Well, under that cloth you will find 
some of the articles to be repaired. Look at them 
and tell me what you think?” 

“Oh, but I have nothing with me to work with,” 
said Beth. “You see, I did not know what was 
wanted of me.” 

“Of course not. That makes no difference. I 
have you for the afternoon. Is two dollars for 
each afternoon you come, too little, my dear?” 


MR. DENNIS MONTAGUE 187 

“I should make more than that In my room, 
Mrs. Severn,” said Beth, quietly. “I am a rapid 
worker, and the girls bring me a great deal of 
their mending to do. I should be glad to come to 
you each Saturday from half past one till half 
past five for three dollars. I could not do it for 
less.” 

“My! that seems a lot for a child to charge,” 
murmured the lady. 

“You can try me one afternoon if you like, and 
decide yourself if my work — and the amount I 
do — is satisfactory,” the girl said, with dignity, 

“Well,” chuckled the lady, suddenly, “I sup- 
pose I want your company as much as I want any- 
thing. You can talk while you work, can’t you?” 

“Oh yes I” laughed Beth, her face brightening. 
“Conversation will not be charged for extra.” 

Mrs. Severn laughed. Immediately Mr. Den- 
nis Montague began to cackle, and went into a 
veritable spasm of laughter which drowned all 
other sounds for the nonce. The parrot v/as a 
jealous bird. He cared only to hear his own voice. 
Again he was quenched (for the moment) by a 
cushion and the undignified command to “shut 
up!” 

Beth saw that Mrs. Severn’s hands and fingers 
were swollen with the gout, too — called by more 
plebian patients, “rheumatism.” Beth wondered 


i88 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

if she was ever able to get the several costly rings 
which were imbedded in the flesh off those swollen 
fingers. Mrs. Severn wore, too, an old-fashioned 
“sunburst” of considerable value. 

“Now, don’t go,” said the lady, when Beth rose, 
considering the bargain completed. “You begin 
your work here to-day.” 

“But really, Mrs. Severn, I have nothing with 
me to work with. And I do not suppose you have 
the proper thread?” 

“Never mind that!” exclaimed the lady. “You 
can talk without a needle and thread in your fin- 
gers?” 

Beth laughed. “Oh yes. But three dollars for 
just talking would be rather an overcharge, 
wouldn’t it? And I cannot afford to give my 
time.” 

“You are not supposed to,” said Mrs. Severn. 
“I admire you for knowing your own mind and 
sticking to it. I shall pay for your time this after- 
noon just the same if you do not work. Tell me. 
Miss Baldwin, why do you have to do this sort of 
thing? For I suppose you have to. No person 
of your age would rather work than play.” 

“Oh no,” said Beth, hesitating to take the lady 
into her complete confidence on such brief acquaint- 
ance. “I do not do it from choice.” 

“Until Mrs. Pepper told me, I had no idea 


MR. DENNIS MONTAGUE 189 

that one of the girls at Rivercliff ever did anything 
useful.” 

“Oh, Mrs. Severn I that is hard. We are all 
learning.” 

“Oh yes. They stuffed me when I was young 
with a lot of nonsense at school. But if the chief 
end of a girl’s existence is to get married, what 
good do books do her?” 

“Why, that isn’t the chief end of girls of to- 
day, Mrs. Severn,” laughed Beth. “At least, not 
of the girls I know.” 

“You do not know many of your fellow-students 
very well, do you?” asked Mrs. Severn, shrewdly. 
“I know that class of young ladies pretty well. 
They haven’t, as a rule, a practical idea once in a 
year. But you are evidently different.” 

“I am different in that my people are not well- 
to-do,” confessed Beth. “I had money enough to 
get through one year at Rivercliff. I hoped to 
earn enough to pay for two more years. That is 
why I began mending for the other girls.” 

“And don’t you expect to accomplish your pur- 
pose?” asked the interested lady. 

“It does not look so now,” said Beth, sadly. 
“My father has been taken ill. His income has. 
stopped. Had my school fees not been paid until 
the end of the term I should have gone home at 
once. But I am earning all I can to take home in 


190 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

June with me and try to repay the folks for some 
of the money they have spent on me.” 

Beth then turned the current of the conversation 
skilfully and got off the subject of herself and her 
poverty. Mrs. Severn was really an idle woman 
who craved amusement. She had little within her- 
self to occupy her mind, and had never learned 
to occupy her hands. 

Beth extracted some enjoyment out of the af- 
ternoon, however; but when she went the parrot 
screamed after her: “I don’t care if you never 
come back !” 

She thought, too, that the foreign maid looked 
at her with a frown as she watched her through the 
hall and down the stairs. There were evidently 
two jealous individuals in the great stone house 
that did not care to see the mistress of it become 
interested in a stranger. 


CHAPTER XX 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 

Success in life comes from putting to use that 
gift, or those gifts, which the individual possesses 
and developing such talent to the highest degree 
of excellence. That is what Beth had done in 
her small way. 

The opportunity to darn silk hose had come her 
way, and she had a natural taste for such work 
and ability in it, as well as considerable training 
from her mother. Out of the “silk stocking hos- 
pital” had grown the other mending. She was in 
a fair way to earn sufficient money during the 
year, in the vacation and all, to carry her through 
the subsequent two school years which she had 
originally resolved to obtain at Rivercliff. 

But Mr. Baldwin’s illness seemed to preclude 
such an event. Beth kept bravely on with her 
work, but with a new resolve. 

She wanted to carry home with her in June as 
much money as she could possibly earn with which 
to repay the loan she supposed her mother had 
made before Beth entered Rivercliff School. 


192 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

In writing home Beth said very little about 
future plans, or even about her immediate work. 
That she was very busy, both with her books and 
outside work, they knew. Twice a week she heard 
from either her mother or Ella. Sometimes Mar- 
cus wrote. 

Marcus was particularly proud of the fact that 
he had obtained a paying “job.” He brought his 
four dollars home each Saturday night, and felt 
himself to be a man. 

“He is getting to be insufferably important,” 
Ella wrote. “If he could raise whiskers there 
would be no living in the house with him. I be- 
lieve he has been pricing safety razors at the 
cutlery store. I tell him he will first have to lather 
his face with cream and let the cat lick it off.” 

To tell the truth, Beth felt sometimes that Mar- 
cus was doing much more for the family than she 
ever could — and she was so much older. Of 
course, if she -could have carried through her 
plans, in the end she might have been the family’s 
main support if her father’s illness continued. 
Now 

All her plans had tumbled. She could not see 
ahead. Living from day to day was not an easy 
thing for Beth Baldwin. 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 193 

Soon after her father was taken ill she heard 
from Larry. He expressed his sorrow for Mr. 
Baldwin’s condition; and Beth knew he was at the 
Bemis Street cottage just as frequently as before 
the holidays. But Larry said nothing in his letter 
regarding the change the event of her father’s ill- 
ness must make in Beth’s plans for an education. 

Ella wrote: “Larry comes and potters around 
with papa in the old shop, sometimes for a whole 
afternoon at a time. I guess his clients aren’t 
keeping him so awfully busy. He isn’t so much 
fun as he used to be. But the other night he took 
all us kids to the picture show.” 

Mr. Baldwin was up and about; but his strength 
did not return and the doctor would not hear of 
his attempting any regular work. Beth knew her 
father had half a dozen different inventions partly 
finished — Mr. Baldwin laughingly called them 
“dinkuses” — in the old shop in the back yard, over 
which he sometimes worked. He never expected 
to make anything of the machines. 

It was several weeks after Beth began to work 
for Mrs. Ricardo Severn on Saturday afternoons 
that she heard again from Larry, and that in a 
most unexpected way. But first something hap- 
pened to Cynthia Fogg. 


194 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

All this time Beth had sought Cynthia from 
time to time when opportunity afforded, and 
showed the girl that she felt more than an ordinary 
interest in her. Cynthia was not of a particularly 
grateful disposition, perhaps; or else she did not 
consider that she needed the interest or sympathy 
of anybody. But with Beth she w^as always much 
franker than with any one else. 

That she made a good waitress or maid it could 
not be said with truth. She did not, indeed, seem 
to care whether she really suited madam or not. 
Yet the madam, so particular and exact with every 
other girl on her staff, seemed rather lenient with 
Cynthia. 

Was it because she felt Cynthia Fogg to be, 
somehow, different from the other maids in her 
employ? 

Beth retained her habit of early rising. Some- 
times, indeed, she worked a little before the first 
bell — especially as the days grew longer. 

But almost always when she was up an hour or 
more before the rising bell rang, she took a run 
out of doors — a very excellent practice, indeed, 
for one working as hard as she did. 

As, at that hour, only the front door was un- 
locked, Beth usually ran down that way. So she 
frequently saw Cynthia Fogg and spoke to her, as 
the latter dusted the furniture and woodwork. 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 195 

Madam Hammersly, with her cambric handker- 
chief, which all her maids learned to fear, was 
always up early, and many a little talk did the 
madam and Beth have together. Sometimes, too, 
would Beth hear her complain to Cynthia of her 
lack of attention to her duties. 

“I can never teach you the importance of trifles, 
Cynthia,” the madam said in Beth’s hearing on 
one occasion. “How many months have you been 
with me?” 

“Almost nine now, Madam,” said Cynthia, 
briskly. “We ought to know each other pretty 
well, don’t you think so?” 

“Girl ! it is only necessary that you should know 
your work. My character has nothing to do with 
the matter,” said the madam, stiffly, 

“Goodness !” drawled Cynthia. “Don’t you see 
that it has? If you were not so particular ” 

“Cynthia! how dare you?” 

“Madam?” replied the freckled girl, raising her 
eyebrows and turning the full battery of her saucy 
blue eyes on Madam Hammersly. 

“If you were not a homeless and friendless or- 
phan ” 

“Who has saved almost a hundred dollars out 
of her wages these past eight months. Madam, so 
don’t let that bother you,” interposed tBe girl, flip- 
pantly. 


196 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“You are discharged!” exclaimed Madam 
Hammersly, finding the girl’s impudence past bear- 
ing. 

“You dear 1 ” retorted Cynthia, in her very pleas- 
antest tone of voice. 

“You shall go at once, girl — this very day!” 
and the angry madam almost sputtered. 

“I just love you for it!” said Cynthia. “You 
don’t know how I have fairly hungered to be dis- 
discharged!” 

She tossed the feather duster on one of the great 
settees, her cap and apron after it, and, humming 
a tune, departed for the rear premises. Beth, who 
stood by with coat and hat on, had been horrified. 

The madam was really in tears — none the less 
sad to see because they were tears of rage. Beth 
could not forgive Cynthia Fogg for her callous- 
ness and flippancy. But at first she dared not 
speak. 

When, however, she saw the madam pick up 
the duster and attempt to reach the top of the pic- 
tures with it, Beth interfered. She took off her 
cap and coat and laid them on a chair. Then she 
took the duster from the lady with a decisive hand. 

“Let me finish here. Madam Hammersly. I 
shall like to,” said Beth. “And I’ll put on Cyn- 
thia’s apron and cap, and do it in style. I am 
sorry she has acted so, Madam — and after all your 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 197 

kindness to her,” added Beth. ‘‘But I dare you 
to find any dust after I get through,” and she 
finished with a laugh, giving the madam a chance 
to recover her wonted calm. 

“But, my dear Miss Baldwin,” Madam Ham- 
mersly finally said weakly, “what — what will my 
daughter — and the instructors — say?” 

Beth looked over her shoulder roguishly. “I 
don’t believe they will see me,” she whispered, 
“for they are none of them up.” 

“But the other young ladies?” put forth the 
madam. 

“I might say the same about most of them,” 
laughed Beth. “But I will say instead: What if 
they should see me?” 

“It — it might cause comment,” said the madam, 
doubtfully. 

Meanwhile, the substitute parlor-maid was go- 
ing briskly about the work Cynthia Fogg had left 
undone. Madarn Hammersly ceased objecting, 
sat down upon one of the hall chairs, smoothed out 
her black silk dress, and watched Beth. 

In twenty minutes the reception hall was fin- 
ished, baseboards wiped, and the walls brushed 
as high up as Beth could reach with the feather 
duster. Then the girl went over the polished bal- 
ustrade of the stairway again with the soft dust- 
cloth. 


198 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“There!” she said, with satisfaction. “I don’t 
think you will find any dust here now, Madam. 
Try your handkerchief.” 

“No, my child,” sighed the lady, nodding her 
head. “I have watched you. That is sufficient. 
You are thorough. You see the importance of 
trifles. I wish I had a girl to train like you.” 

“Do you think I could suit you. Madam?” asked 
Beth, demurely. 

“Indeed, I am sure of it,” cried Madam Ham- 
mersly, vigorously. 

“By getting to work at half past five and work- 
ing till seven, I could dust the stairway and hall 
and one of the drawing rooms each morning. 
Then, in the hour between three and four in the 
afternoon except Saturdays, when I could start 
half an hour earlier in the morning, I could do the 
other drawing room.” 

“Goodness me, child!” exclaimed the madam, 
rising quickly. “What are you saying?” 

“I am applying for the position that I see is 
open. Madam,” said Beth, laughing. “If you 
think I’d suit ” 

“But, child!” gasped the madam. “Can you 
do It with your manifold other duties?” 

“Why,” said Beth, laughing outright, “my 
mother says that the only people in the world who 
find time to do extra work are the busy people.” 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 199 

“Perhaps she is correct,” agreed the lady, 
though somewhat slowly. “I — I do not know 
what to say, my dear.” 

“Say yes. I will go right ahead and do the 
south drawing room this morning. Then this 
afternoon, in my free hour, I will do the north 
room. Is it agreed?” 

The madam showed weakness at that moment. 
She believed Beth would make a “perfect treas- 
ure” of a parlor maid. So she said: “Yes.” 

Beth ran upstairs just as the rising bell rang, 
and removed the cap and apron in her room. She 
hid them away and said nothing about the dust- 
ing, not even to Molly. 

By “grapevine telegraph” Maude Grimshaw 
learned before breakfast that Cynthia Fogg was 
going. She was delighted. 

“What did I tell you?” she asked loudly, at the 
table. “I told you I would not stand that impu- 
dent waitress remaining here. No, indeed!” and 
she tossed her head as though it were by her in- 
fluence that Cynthia had received her discharge. 

“Pass the butter!” said somebody, in a sepul- 
chral voice, and the whole table tittered, while 
Miss Grimshaw flushed red, leaving the table ab- 
ruptly. 

Molly learned that Cynthia would not leave the 
premises till afternoon. The down boat stopped 


200 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

at the Rivercliff landing at four-thirty. So Beth 
took her time about seeing the departing girl. 

Of course, Cynthia was her senior, and, after 
all, a much more sophisticated girl than Beth. 
Yet the latter felt somewhat responsible for the 
freckled one. 

At least, had it not been for her and Molly, 
Cynthia Fogg would not have come to Rivercliff 
School to work. And it hurt Beth to think that 
she was going away under such circumstances. 

She believed the madam must have really liked 
the strange girl, or she would never have kept her 
so long; for Cynthia had done none of her work 
well. Miss Small whispered that Cynthia had 
been the slowest and most careless girl that had 
ever worked’in the house — and yet Madam Ham- 
mersly had borne with her. 

When Beth saw Cynthia to bid her good-bye 
she did criticize the freckled girFs course. “You 
might have tried to please the madam — she was 
so kind to you,” Beth said. 

“Goodness me !” smiled Cynthia. “Are house- 
maids ever grateful? I didn’t know it. And, to 
tell the truth, Miss Baldwin, I don’t think they 
have much to be grateful for. 

“I was put at the top of the house to sleep, in 
a stuffy little room with a window that would open 
only a few inches at the bottom, and with the 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 201 


coarsest of bed clothing, and a rag of a carpet on 
the floor. We were expected to keep our rooms 
neat, and there was little pleasure in doing so, for 
they were so ugly — and everything in them so 
ugly — that one could not make them livable. My 
bureau had only three legs and the mirror was 
cracked. And in the cold weather! Why, the 
halls up there are barely warm. You can’t tell 
me anything about what maids have to put up with 
hereafter. When I go back ” 

“Go back where?” asked Beth, pointedly. “To 
the institution you ran away from?” 

“Well! And if I did it would be no worse, at 
least,” and Cynthia’s wonderful eyes smiled again, 
lighting up her freckled face and making it very 
attractive for the moment. 

“But don’t you worry over what is to become 
of me, dear girl ! I have nearly a hundred dol- 
lars, and it will last me a long time. I am all 
right. I will write you when I get settled.” 

That afternoon Beth stole down in Cynthia’s 
discarded cap and apron, opened the north draw- 
ing room and began her dusting. The madam 
was on hand, evidently to see if Beth kept her 
part of the contract, and hardly had Beth begun 
her work when Cynthia, dressed for departure, 
appeared in the reception hall. 

“Oh, Madam Hammersly !” she said cheerfully. 


202 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“I must bid you good-bye before I go. I hope 
you will get another girl to suit you better than I 
could What! Beth Baldwin? Are you do- 

ing my work?” 

“No, Cynthia, I am doing my own work,” 
laughed Beth. 

“And much better than I could ever do it, I 
warrant,” laughed the older girl. “Well, Madam, 

I know that you will be perfectly satisfied with 
Miss Baldwin. Good-bye 1” 

“That is not the door for the serving people to 
use, and you know it well, Cynthia,” said the 
madam, her voice shaking. 

“Bless your dear heart! I know it,” and Cyn- 
thia’s laugh was mellow and her manner unruffled. 
“But I came in this way and I might as well de- 
part like a lady too.” 

Suddenly she seized the madam around the 
neck and planted a warm kiss upon either of her 
wrinkled cheeks. “You are a dear !” she repeated. 
“Good-bye!” 

The next moment she had flashed through the 
open door and out over the porch and down the 
steps — just as a motor-car stopped before the 
door. Madam Hammersly stood, actually thun- 
derstruck at the liberty Cynthia had taken, so only 
Beth saw the young man who alighted from the 
car. 


SOMETHING UNEXPECTED 203 

The chauffeur was about to start again when 
Cynthia spoke to him, and then stepped into the 
tonneau and was whisked away. For a servant 
she certainly was departing in style from River- 
cliff School. 

But Beth was looking at somebody besides Cyn- 
thia. She saw the young man turn and stare after 
the departing girl; then he came slowly up the 
steps. 

It was Larry Haven. He caught sight of Beth 
standing just inside the hall door and his face 
brightened. He sprang forward, exclaiming: 

“Beth! Why, Beth Baldwin! How lucky to 
see you at once!” and Beth met him quite as 
warmly, forgetting all about Madam Hammersly’s 
presence, and put both her hands — one still hold- 
ing the dustcloth — in Larry’s gloved ones. 


CHAPTER XXI 


THE BURIAL OF FRIENDSHIP 

Both the young people were for the moment 
quite unconscious of Madam Hammersly’s pres- 
ence. They shook hands longer than was neces- 
sary, and burbled inconsequential questions and 
answers, as most people do to hide their deepest 
feelings. Beth’s black eyes sparkled through a 
film of teardrops and Larry’s blue eyes expressed 
all the admiration they were capable of showing. 

But he said: “How nice to see you again, Beth. 
Say! is there a girl going to school here named 
Freylinghausen ?” 

“Freylinghausen?” repeated Beth, puzzled, yet 
feeling that the name struck some chord of mem- 
ory. 

“Yes. Miss Freylinghausen, of Philadelphia. 
No end of a swell ” 

“We have plenty of that kind here, Larry,” 
said Beth, her eyes twinkling and the dimples com- 
ing into her cheeks at the call of mischief. “But 
I do not think that a girl of that name attends 
Rivercliff School.” 


204 


THE BURIAL OF FRIENDSHIP 205 

“Why! I just saw her come out. She passed 
me on the steps. She took the car I rode up in 
just now,” cried Larry, rather excitedly. “I met 
her once with a party of Philadelphians that came 
to New York ” 

“Oh, my dear I” laughed Beth. “That was Cyn- 
thia Fogg.” 

“Who was? The girl I met in New York?” 

“No. The girl who just went out. She — she 
— she has been doing parlor maid’s work here, 
and has just been discharged.” 

She said this so low that Madam Hammersly 
could not hear it. Then she wheeled and led 
Larry toward the austere looking lady in the back- 
ground. 

“I beg your pardon. Madam Hammersly,” 
Beth said. “This is my very oldest friend, Mr. 
Lawrence Haven. He is just like an elder brother 
to me, and comes from my home.” 

The madam welcomed Larry with some cordial- 
ity. She evidently liked the young man’s appear- 
ance. After a minute or two of conversation, 
Beth asked, placidly: 

“May Larry sit down here in the drawing room. 
Madam, while I finish my dusting? We can talk 
just as well.” 

“Why — ^yes, child. I see no objection,” re- 
plied the madam, yet looking at Beth oddly. 


2o6 girls of rivercliff school 


“Would you not rather postpone the — er — assist- 
ance you were so kindly rendering me until your 
guest has gone?” 

“Oh, no, Madam,” Beth said brightly. “Can’t 
afford to put it off till later. Mother always says, 
‘Later never strikes by our clock.’ And Larry 
has often bothered me while I did housework.” 

Larry said nothing. His face, however, was a 
study. He followed Beth with some hesitation 
into the north room. The madam, who believed 
in the proprieties, remained just out pf earshot. 

“Now tell me about everything and every- 
body, Larry,” Beth said blithely, recommencing 
her dusting. “You may sit in that corner by the 
door. I have dusted there.” 

“But, Beth !” gasped Larry. “What does this 
mean?” 

“What does what mean?” 

“This — er — masquerade?” he said, pointing to 
her cap and apron. 

“I’ll have you know, sir, this is no masquerade,” 
cried the girl, laughing. “This cap and apron are 
the badges of independence.” 

“Independence !” 

“Yes, sir. I have taken Cynthia Fogg’s place. 
She did not suit. I am going to earn real money 
by doing parlor maid’s work — if I can satisfy 
Madam Hammersly.” 


THE BURIAL OF FRIENDSHIP 207 

“But, Beth I” Larry repeated. “What — what 
will people say?” 

“What people?” 

“The — the young ladies here at school?” 

“Why, they don’t care who keeps the furniture 
polished,” and Beth laughed again, but she shot 
her friend a penetrating glance. 

“How about Miss Hammersly — the principal? 
I should think she would not allow such a thing. 
Why, Beth I it is dreadful!” 

“What is dreadful?” she asked him, with sud- 
den tenseness in her tone. “My earning money in 
an honorable way? Why, Larry, you know I 
came to Rivercliff with that expectation.” 

“But this — er — domestic service,” he said 
faintly. Then, with sudden heat: “And is it true 
that you go out — by the day — to people’s houses — 
to do such work?” 

“Not just like this, Larry,” said the girl, gently, 
and still watching him covertly. 

“But it seems too dreadful I Does your mother 
know it?” 

“I presume she has her suspicions,” and Beth 
laughed shortly. 

“I don’t mean to offend you ” 

“Then let us talk of something else, dear Larry, 
for I see that we never shall agree in this matter. 
I will tell you that mother borrowed from some 


208 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


one four hundred dollars to pay for my first year 
at school here. I must pay that sum back, for, 
with father out of work, my education must cease 
with the completion of the term paid for. Now! 
we will drop it. How Is father?” 

Larry, too, tried his best to get away from the 
subject, and to talk pleasantly of home affairs. 
But how could he ignore Beth’s domestic activities 
when she kept on busily dusting all through his 
visit? 

The drawing room was finished, Larry’s call 
came to an end, and her free hour was over, all 
at the same time. She went composedly with him 
to the front door, removing her cap and apron as 
she heard the girls come out of the lecture room 
above. Madam Hammersly had stolen away and 
left them alone. 

“Good-bye, Larry,” Beth said calmly, giving 
him her hand. “Remember me to everybody at 
home.” 

Larry looked away. He coughed, tried to clear 
his throat, attempted to say something, and then 
suddenly looked around to find his hand empty 
and that the door had been gently closed behind 
him. 

Beth went trippingly up to her next recitation, 
appeared as usual at supper, and spent some time 
at her mending afterward. When Molly came up- 


THE BURIAL OF FRIENDSHIP 209 

stairs, the two chums spent an hour conning the 
problems for the next day, and Beth showed no 
shadow of the pain that throbbed within her with 
every beat of her pulse. 

When the lights were out, however, and a wind- 
driven moon peered in at the window of Number 
Eighty, South Wing, it caught Beth Baldwin lying 
wide-awake upon her pillow, and that pillow wet 
with bitter, bitter tears. She was busily engaged 
in burying a friendship that had begun with her 
very first childish remembrances. 

This day — the one on which Cynthia Fogg de- 
parted and Larry Haven called — was the last day 
of mark for Beth in this year at Rivercliff School. 

Of course, other important things happened — 
very important, indeed, to Miss Hammersly’s 
graduating class. But little save lessons and the 
usual grind of daily duties seemed to stir the life 
of the freshmen and the sophomores. 

Beth continued to mend and patch for her clien- 
tele up to the very last week of school. She would 
carry home nearly one hundred dollars with her. 

Mrs. Ricardo Severn had continued to be Beth’s 
very good friend. Although the girl earned quite 
all she was paid at the big stone house on the 
Boulevard in mending Mrs. Severn’s drawn-work 
and laces, she was really of the most value through 
her cheering presence. 


210 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


But the foreign maid and the parrot continued 
to look askance at the pretty schoolgirl, whom the 
former continued to announce as “Miz Baldwig.’^ 
As for Mr. Dennis Montague, or “Dennis 
Mudd,” as the bird preferred to call himself, he 
stared always at Beth with little, evil, red eyes, 
and the girl was careful never to go too near when 
the cage door was open. 

“And, my dear,” begged Mrs. Severn, “don’t 
ever ask him if he wants a cracker. That always 
throws Mr. Montague into a rage!” 

Beth saw Mrs. Severn the Saturday afternoon 
before school closed for the year. The lady dis- 
missed her kindly, making Beth promise that, if 
she should come back to Rivercliff for another 
term, she would take up her work at Severn Lodge 
just where she laid it down. 

The parrot yelled after her for the last time, 
“I don’t care if you never come back!” The for- 
eign maid scowled her down the grand stairway; 
and Beth went away feeling really sorry to be 
parted from Mrs. Severn. 

The next few days were those of hurry and 
bustle incident to the closing of any large school; 
and finally Beth and Molly were off on the Water 
W agtail again for their trip down the river — 
and home. 


CHAPTER XXII 


f 

A RENEWED RESOLVE 

Beth only half promised to go to Hambro later 
in the summer to visit Molly Granger and the 
seven aunts. She was not at all sure that she could 
accomplish it, for she did not know exactly how 
she should find things at home. 

Molly said: “If you don’t come, Bethesda, I’ll 
advance on Hudsonvale some day soon, with all 
the aunts at my back, and like a crew of brigands 
we will capture you and carry you bodily away.” 

There was more cheerfulness in the atmosphere 
at home than Beth expected to find. Mr. Bald- 
win had obtained some light work that paid a few 
dollars every week, Marcus had been raised by his 
employer to five dollars, and the family in the 
Bemis Street cottage was getting along fairly well. 

Of course, there were no new dresses, and Mrs. 
Baldwin was doing her own washing and ironing 
with the smaller girls’ help, while what came upon 
the table was very plain. “We fortunately have 
no rent to pay, and the taxes are small,” Mrs. 
Baldwin said. 


2II 


212 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


When Beth produced the hundred dollars she 
had saved, her mother really seemed more 
troubled than amazed. 

“Why — why, Beth! you are quite wonderful. 
I will put it with that other fifty you sent ” 

“Haven’t you used that?” cried her daughter. 

“No, my dear. We have not had to.” 

“We’ve nearly half the sum you borrowed for 
me, and can soon pay it all back, for I shall get 
more work this summer,” Beth declared briskly. 
“I shall start right out to call upon the folks in 
town and show them the work I can do mending 
lace and silk hose and the like. I can make more 
at such work, if I can get enough of it to do, than 
I possibly could in a store or at the factory.” 

“But, my dear child ” 

“It is my duty to do it. Mamma — and I love it,” 
Beth said firmly. “The money you borrowed was 
spent for me. I’ll make up the whole in time.” 

“It was not a loan to be paid back — at once,” 
said Mrs. Baldwin, desperately. 

“Why, Mamma I what do you mean? All loans 
must be paid.” 

“At least,” the troubled mother hastened to 
add: “You are not to try to repay it. This hun- 
dred and fifty dollars you have earned so bravely 
in your school year, must be kept to help pay your 
next year’s fees at Rivercliff.” 


A RENEWED RESOLVE 213 

“Oh, Mother! I cannot do it,” cried Beth. “I 
must help you here. It is only right that I should.” 

“Let me be the judge of that, Daughter,” Mrs. 
Baldwin said. “I thought you had resolved to 
win your teacher’s certificate — and at Rivercliff ?” 

“But, how can I?” murmured Beth. “It is im- 
possible.” 

“It seems to me,” and Mrs. Baldwin’s eyes 
twinkled a little now, “that you have proved quite 
the contrary. I am proud of you. You have done 
so well according to your school reports, and been 
able to earn so much money, too, that I feel you 
are to be highly commended. I wonder what 
Euphemia will say?” 

Beth looked at her mother sharply. In that 
moment she guessed half her mother’s secret. The 
four hundred dollars had been loaned by Larry’s 
mother I 

She felt that she could say nothing to her 
mother about it. The subject of the supposed loan 
and her possible return to Rivercliff in the autumn 
was avoided by both of them for a time. Mean- 
while, however, Beth thought deeply about it. 

If there was anybody in the world to whom 
Beth did not wish to feel indebted, it was to Mrs. 
Euphemia Haven. She could scarcely have told 
why had she been taxed with the question. She 
certainly had no dislike for Larry’s mother; only 


214 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

she always felt that the lady was patronizing her 
and trying to push her aside. 

She might have guessed before, Beth told her- 
self, that Mrs. Haven was the only person her 
mother could possibly have borrowed four hun- 
dred dollars from — and without security. So that 
was how, the summer before, Larry had known 
that she was going away to school and when, and 
so had filled her stateroom aboard the Water 
Wagtail with flowers. 

Beth suspected, from what Larry let drop when 
he called at Rivercliff, that he had come there for 
the special purpose of learning if reports his 
mother had evidently heard of Beth’s work were 
true. 

“And he got his answer — with a vengeance,” 
sighed Beth. 

She believed that now Mrs. Haven must be 
sorry that she had lent the money to pay for the 
first year’s expenses at Rivercliff. “Of course, my 
earning money in the way I do has disgusted her. 
And Larry ” 

She could not bear to think of her old friend. 
Never — till the day she died — could she have just 
the same measure of affection for a friend that she 
had for Larry Haven ! 

He must have known that his mother had loaned 
the four hundred dollars which Beth had men- 


A RENEWED RESOLVE 


215 

tioned at their last interview — the day Larry 
called at Rivercliff School. He knew then that 
Beth was intent upon paying that loan with the 
money she earned. And here was her mother de- 
siring her to go on with her education, and so 
necessarily postponing the evil day of payment 
into the future. 

Beth did not know what to do. It was evident 
her mother did not wish to discuss the loan — did 
not wish to be questioned about it. Beth had been 
brought up too strictly to doubt her parents’ judg- 
ment. 

And now, soon after her return home, came 
kind Mr. Lomax, the principal of the high school, 
to congratulate her on her standing at Rivercliff. 

He brought with him, too, a letter he had re- 
ceived from Miss Hammersly. Although that 
good woman had said nothing to Beth before she 
came home for the summer, in this letter she beg- 
ged Mr. Lomax to use his influence with Beth’s 
family, that they would allow her to complete her 
course at Rivercliff. 

“I do not approve, as a general rule, of my 
girls working as many hours or as hard as Miss 
Baldwin does to earn money to pay school ex- 
penses,” wrote Miss Hammersly. “Usually, the 
girls who have to struggle so to achieve the bare 


2i6 girls of rivercliff school 


necessities through school and college, are the ones 
who, after all, gain but a superficial benefit from 
the educational courses. The work they must do 
to live comes first with them, as is natural. They 
fall behind in their school work. Not so with 
Miss Baldwin. I am proud of her and I want to 
see her finish her course so auspiciously begun.” 

“Somehow, Mrs. Baldwin,” Mr. Lomax said 
to Beth’s mother, “you must push Elizabeth on. 
She must continue her course at Rivercliff. Why ! 
it will be a distinct loss to the educational com- 
munity if she does not become a teacher.” 

“I do not know how that may be,” said Mrs. 
Baldwin, quietly; “but I do know that I want Beth 
to continue at the school. At first, when Mr. Bald- 
win was taken ill, I did not see how we could ac- 
complish it. But now, by her own exertions, she 
has proved that it is possible. Why! she has al- 
ready in hand enough to pay the first half of next 
year’s expenses.” 

So it was settled. Beth renewed her resolve 
and, as Marcus said, “buckled down to work.” 

She had cards printed, and with them she went 
from house to house in the better residential sec- 
tions of Hudsonvale and the neighboring towns, 
showing samples where she could of her really 
beautiful work. Both Mrs. Baldwin and Beth 


A RENEWED RESOLVE 217 

had a “sleight,” as old-fashioned people called it, 
with the needle — especially on such fine work as 
Beth now essayed. 

“You work up a good trade this summer. 
Daughter,” said the practical Mrs. Baldwin, “and 
I’ll hold it for you until next long vacation. Ella 
is getting such a big girl now, and Prissy is so 
helpful, that I can do it.” 

Beth had already shown her own capability in 
getting ahead. She was not afraid to ask for 
work, and where she was allowed to show speci- 
mens of mending she was almost sure of being 
engaged for similar tasks. 

One thing she would not do, and her mother 
suggested it only once — and that faintly. Beth 
refused to take her samples of work to the Haven 
place and ask Mrs. Haven to recommend her to 
her friends. 

Everybody who could afford it in Hudsonvale 
went away for at least a fortnight in the summer, 
and Mrs. Haven and her son went to some north- 
ern resort soon after Beth came home from River- 
cliff; so it was not strange that Beth saw little of 
Larry, even in the most casual way, during the va- 
cation. 

She was once during the summer at a simple 
evening party, dressed in the poplin, refurbished 
with new ribbons, and Larry unexpectedly dropped 


2i8 girls of rivercliff school 


in. He devoted himself to her entertainment for 
a part of the evening and, quite as a matter of 
course, saw her home. 

Both talked very fast, and about perfectly un- 
interesting matters, all the way — ^both too nervous 
and excited to know afterward just what either 
had said — and parted with a handclasp at Beth’s 
gate. 

Several times, however, during the later sum- 
mer, Larry was at the Bemis Street cottage to see 
Mr. Baldwin. Beth’s father and the young man 
usually remained closeted together for some time, 
and once Mr. Baldwin came into the sitting room 
after such an interview, smiling broadly. 

“Let me tell you,” he said, “that young chap 
has got something in his head that didn’t have to 
be put there by a surgical operation!” But just 
what he meant by this commendation he di'd not 
explain. 

Beth was very successful that summer, and for 
a girl, earned a good deal of money with her nim- 
ble fingers. It was a fact that she had remarkable 
talent for the occupation she had taken up. Peo- 
ple who own nice laces and the like, are only too 
glad to pay a commensurate price for their restora- 
tion by skilful workwomen. 

She had put her acceptance of Molly Granger’s 
invitation to Hambro off as late in the summer as 


A RENEWED RESOLVE 219 

she could. But now, finally, Molly threatened so 
seriously to lead a pirate' band of aunts into the 
Bemis Street camp, that it was decided Beth must 
go to her chum’s. And she welcomed the diver- 
sion, too. 

She went to Hambro by boat, of course; and 
the day of her departure on this outing she re- 
ceived a letter from long silent Cynthia Fogg. It 
was rather a queer letter, too — ^just as queer as the 
girl herself ! 

“Are you going to return to Rivercliff School?” 
v/as a part of the epistle. “I’ve heard your father 
is ill and that you are not going back there. Tell 
me if this is so at once. ... I have a good job 
and all is well with me.” 

There was something so insistent about that 
question that Beth wrote at once, reassuring her 
strange friend, that she was to return to River- 
cliff. Cynthia’s address was on Dekalb Avenue, 
Philadelphia. Beth wondered what part of the 
city that was — whether it was in the wealthy resi- 
dential portion, where presumably Cynthia had 
secured her “good job,” or among the poor of 
the Quaker metropolis. Beth did not believe that 
it could be at the orphanage in which Cynthia pre- 
sumably had been brought up. 


220 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Beth had looked forward to her visit to Molly 
and the seven aunts with a great deal of satisfac- 
tion and curiosity; nor was she disappointed. It 
proved interesting and she made seven very lovely 
friends. The aunts and Molly lived together in a 
big house in the better residential section of Ham- 
bro, and were, indeed, quite the most important 
people, socially, in the whole town. 

Aunt Celia liked Beth because she really was 
a student and loved books. Molly’s eldest aunt 
spent her days in a comfortable chair in her own 
sitting room, reading — and reading the solid, not 
to say stolid works of certain English authors who 
have mostly gone out of fashion in this day. 

.r- > Aunt Catherine — almost always suffering from 
a cold in the head and never by any possibility 
going out of doors without overshoes — was con- 
sidered delicate by all the family. She confided to 
Beth her favorite remedies for most diseases,^rom 
cholera to housemaid’s knee. 

Auntie Cora was society’s devotee — a little, 
bustling woman, who was the cheerfulest company 
and never talked of anything that amounted (so 
Aunt Celia said) to “a -row of beans.” She took 
Beth and Molly to afternoon teas to show them 
off, and drove with them in borrowed coupes be- 
hind stiff-backed coachmen and footmen through 
the pleasant roads around Hambro. 


A RENEWED RESOLVE 


221 


Aunt Carrie, the maritime one, took Beth to her 
room and displayed for her admiration much of 
the wedding finery she had been preparing with her 
own hands through a series of heart-hungering 
years, against the time when her captain should 
come home and settle down. 

“John has not had his own ship very long. He 
must first lay aside a competence — and for years 
he had a father and a mother to support. But 
this voyage to the East and one more will ‘com- 
plete the tally,’ he says,” and she blushed very 
prettily, for she was a sweet maiden lady with all 
the modesty of a girl. 

' On a teakwood table in a corner of her room — 
a present from the captain, of course — was a mari- 
ner’s chart on which every day was faithfully 
pricked the possible course of the ship Rollings- 
gate — a huge fourmaster. 

“I correct it by John’s letters,” Aunt Carrie 
said. “And really, it is quite surprising to see how 
close I come to it — sometimes.” 

She had learned the elements of navigation, too, 
so as to know more about John’s calling. To 
Beth’s mind this romance of the maiden lady was 
the very sweetest of which she had ever heard. 

Aunt Charlotte, the plump, capable aunt, was 
housekeeper, and was of a much more practical 
nature than the other “Granger girls,” as Hambro 


222 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

people knew them. Aunt Cassie actually had an 
attack of croup while Beth was in the house. 

“And if you can beat that in August, I wish 
you’d tell me!” Molly exclaimed. 

Aunt Cassie’s whole existence, it seemed, had 
been one series of coughs and colds. Aunt Cyril 
was very kind to Beth, but rather aloof. She could 
not wholly approve of a girl who did housework 
for her school tuition. Yet she was too sweet and 
lovable to snub her niece’s chum. 

“They are just the sweetest, lovingest dears that 
ever lived — all of them!” Beth Baldwin declared 
to her mother, when she returned from this visit. 
“And the house is full of cats — both living ones 
and those Jolly Molly has drawn. The aunts are 
too tender hearted to have a single kitten drowned, 
or to destroy even one of Molly’s attempts at 
feline portraiture.” 

Beth was not in Hudsonvale long this time. 
The semester would soon open at Rivercliff, and 
she took the boat again for the twenty-four hour 
journey up the river. 

Beth bade Larry good-bye the evening before 
she departed for school, and in full family as- 
sembled. The heart-high courage and happiness 
that had attended her first departure for school 
was lacking when the Water Wagtail left the Hud- 
sonvale landing. 


A RENEWED RESOLVE 223 

But Beth had many things to think of now that 
she had not dreamed of the year previous. She 
was much older, too — much more than a year 
older! And hers was not a nature that “hugged 
sorrow to its bosom.” She had too many plans 
for the future. 

She wished to get to Rivercliff, get settled, and 
put out her “hospital” sign. Molly had painted 
a new one with an added line: 

First Aid to Lingerie** 

She had counted on Mrs. Severn’s work as a 
solid asset for her school campaign. Arriving at 
Rivercliff on Friday, Saturday afternoon Beth 
called at Severn Lodge at her usual hour. 

The gorgeously liveried footman let her in — 
but she thought his look was doubtful. Before she 
could mount the stairs the foreign maid appeared 
at the top of the flight. 

“Miz Baldwig iz to vait below,” she hissed. 

Beth stepped back in surprise. The foreign 
person disappeared — then reappeared again. She 
brought a folded note downstairs and extended it 
at arm’s length to Beth. 

“Ze compliments of madam,” said the maid. 

Beth unfolded and looked at the note, quite 
stunned. It read: 


224 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Mrs. Severn will not again require Miss Bald- 
win’s assistance.” 

It was written and signed in the upright, old- 
fashioned hand of the lady herself. 

As Beth left the house she almost thought she 
heard the parrot shrieking after her: 

“I don’t care if you never come back!” 


CHAPTER XXIII 


SUSPICION HOVERS 

Fortunate it was that lessons began on Mon- 
day, and that there were certain preparations to 
be made for them. Likewise, there was some 
work for Beth’s nimble fingers, for some of the 
girls who had arrived at Rivercliff first, had ac- 
tually brought their summer’s mending with them. 

“For you do it much nicer than I can get it 
done at home, Baldwin,” cried one. 

“I tell you, Beth, you are an institution,” Mamie 
Dunn declared. “I don’t know what we should 
do without you. I, for one, would go in rags.” 

So Beth did not have much time to worry over 
Mrs. Severn’s odd action. She merely comforted 
herself by saying that rich old ladies — especially 
with parrots and foreign maids — are apt to be 
fanciful. 

Miss Hammersly called Beth into her office for 
a special interview on one of the days soon after 
the opening of the term. 

“I am pleased to see you with us for another 
year, Beth,” she said, with that shade of cordiality 
225 


226 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

with which she always received her second year 
pupils. “You have come, I presume, fully pre- 
pared to take up your studies with renewed vigor 
and a steady application?” 

“Oh yes. Miss Hammersly,” Beth said cheer- 
fully. “I love to study.” 

“And you will — ahem! — make no engagements 
which will interfere with recitations or study 
hours?” 

“No,” and Beth flushed a little. “Madam 
Hammersly tells me she has engaged a girl to do 
my dusting.” 

“Yes; at my suggestion,” said the principal. 
“Besides, I think it debarred you from proper 
physical exercise — which you need, Beth.” 

“Yes, Miss Hammersly. I will try to make it 
up in some other way,” said the girl, doubtfully. 
With both Mrs. Severn’s work and the dusting 
lost, Beth was worried about the future. 

“By the way,” Miss Hammersly said. “Do you 
help Mrs. Ricardo Severn this fall?” 

For some reason Beth could not keep from 
blushing. “No, Miss Hammersly,” she said. “I 
expected to, and I went to her home on Saturday 
prepared to do so; but I was informed that my 
services were not wanted any more.” 

“By whom were you so informed?” the prin- 
cipal asked quickly. 


SUSPICION HOVERS 


227 

“Why, Mrs. Severn really told me herself — in 
writing. She sent down a note,” said Beth, some- 
what surprised at the interest the principal of Riv- 
ercliff displayed in the matter. 

“You — are you familiar with Mrs. Severn’s 
handwriting?” questioned Miss Hammersly. 

“Oh, yes. She has sent me notes before.” 

“Do you not think it strange, Beth?” 

“Ye-es; in a way. But I know she is notional.” 

“Did you know that she sent here after you in 
June — the very day after the school closed?” 

“Sent for me?” cried Beth, in amazement. 

“Yes.” 

“Why — how odd ! She knew I was going away. 
I bade her good-bye.” 

“Of course, you can imagine no reason for her 
treating you so now?” 

“None at all. Unless she may have found some- 
body else to amuse her. I do not really think,” 
confessed Beth, flushing again, and dimpling, “that 
it was my work she cared for so much as my chat- 
ter. She likes to be amused.” 

Miss Hammersly smiled — yet her gravity re- 
turned instantly. “Very well,” she said, tapping 
on her desk with her pencil in a thoughtful way. 
“You may go, Beth.” 

Beth continued at times to wonder about Mrs. 
Severn’s refusal to see her when she called. That 


228 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

she could not understand. She believed that the 
foreign maid did not like her and might have in- 
fluenced Mrs. Severn against Beth herself by some 
means, although the girl could not imagine how. 

The opening of a new school year is like the 
picking up of scattered stitches wi’th a knitting 
needle. Not only must the mind become attuned 
to lessons and to discipline again, but one’s for- 
mer friends must be greeted, new friendships 
made, and — unfortunately — old enmities and 
feuds attended to. 

Rivalries always will exist where youths congre- 
gate — in school, or elsewhere. The very system 
of education followed at Rivercliff fostered rival- 
ries. And a healthy competition between students 
is always of benefit. 

Warped and selfish natures, however, can never 
enter into any struggle and play the game with 
fairness. The “give and take” of the playground 
can never please these. 

Although Miss Hammersly and her instructors 
watched the two hundred and more girls at River- 
cliff School as closely as was wise, they could not 
foresee all feuds nor could they break them up 
when once started. Maude Grimshaw and her 
friends continued at times to vent upon Beth their 
spleen; and occasionally they succeeded in ruffling 
the placid surface of Beth’s life. 


SUSPICION HOVERS 


229 

Ordinarily, “Princess Fancyfoot,” as Molly 
called Maude, was content to lift her sharp nose to 
a more acute angle when she noticed Beth or to 
cast a slurring remark or two in her direction. 
These attentions Beth did not allow to trouble her 
soul. 

She seldom came in direct contact with Maude. 
To tell the truth, Maude was not a brilliant 
scholar. Beth and Molly were forging far ahead 
of the heiress to the Grimshaw millions. Molly 
had been fired by Beth’s example and wished to 
become self-supporting, too; and was preparing 
herself to teach. 

“I don’t care what Aunt Cyril says,” Molly an- 
nounced. “She thinks it beneath a Granger to 
earn money at any occupation. Aunt Charlotte is 
more practical. She tells me she will take the 
money I earn teaching and invest it for me so that 
it will earn at least seven per cent. Then, she says, 
I will have something to make me independent in 
my old age. For, you see, Bethesda, my father 
spent all his patrimony on the heathen, so I have 
nothing but what the aunts give me. 

“It looks as though Aunt Charlotte had an un- 
canny belief that I shall remain an old maid like 
all the other ‘Granger girls,’ ” and she made a lit- 
tle face at the thought. 

With all her hard work at her books and in the 


230 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“hospital,” Beth went In for at least one relax- 
ation. She played an excellent game at basket-ball, 
and there was great rivalry at Rivercliff in this ath- 
letic pastime. 

Beth and Molly had won places on the second 
basket-ball team and, now that a class had grad- 
uated, there was an opening on the first team. 
This team played championship games against club 
teams in Jackson City and other first school teams 
about the State. Basket-ball was a game of which 
Miss Hammersly herself particularly approved. 

The rivalry for the post of honor on the first 
team waxed high during the first four weeks of 
the term. The first regular game of the season, 
with a team from the Jackson City Academy, was 
to be played on one of the Rivercliff courts. 

The chums in Numbers Eighty and Eighty-one, 
Maude Grimshaw, who could be active if she so 
chose, Stella Price, and a girl named Pratt, were 
the contestants for the place of honor on the first 
team. 

Between Beth and Molly It was just a zestful 
rivalry for first place; the chums were, of course, 
good natured about it. There was some acerbity 
between the others, perhaps. In the case of 
Maude, she naturally fought “tooth and nail,” as 
Molly said, and was as unpleasant about it as pos- 
sible. 


SUSPICION HOVERS 


231 

The physical Instructor, Miss Crossleigh, and 
the other members of the first basket-ball team, 
decided by vote for the girl who was to make the 
team. Each candidate who was passed by Miss 
Crossleigh, was tried out In practice games before 
the last Saturday In September. 

On that day Molly came to the breakfast taHc 
a little late, both flushed and excited. 

“Well! It’s all over, girls,” she confided to the 
table In general. 

“What’s all over — the sky?” giggled one of her 
hearers. 

“The contest for the first team. Miss Cross- 
leigh has just written up the names on the gym 
board. It’s all over but the shouting.” 

“Oh! who’s got It?” cried two or three at once. 

Maude stopped eating and flashed a look at 
Molly. “I’d like to know what you know about 
it?” she demanded. 

“I tell you Miss Crossleigh has just written up 
the names of the girls who will play Jackson City 
next week.” 

“Who’s the new one? Not you, Molly, I’ll be 
bound,” cried Stella Price. 

Molly could no longer control her smiles. Yet 
she said, a bit ruefully: 

“Not guilty! Poor 111’ Molly wins not, of 
course. She never does.” 


232 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Who Is it?” demanded Maude, eagerly. 

“Why, Maude! who could it be?” drawled 
Molly, wickedly. “There was never but one girl 
of us that really had a chance from the start.” 

Maude’s complacent and conscious expression 
was delightful. 

“Of course, I knew ” she began, with a toss 

of her head, when Molly interposed with : 

“We all knew! Hail to the chieftainess I 
Beth ! get up and bow. Y ou^re elected/* 

^*WhatT* shrieked Maude. 

“How horrid!” exclaimed Laura Hedden, loy- 
ally. 

A general laugh went around the table. 
“Speech ! Speech !” clamored the girls. 

Beth got up, flushing, and bowed with mock 
solemnity. “I am overpowered,” she said. “You 
must excuse me. Besides, I am hungry.” 

“Well! if that isn’t the very meanest thing!” 
hissed Maude Grimshaw. “That pauper has no 
more right to the place than — than ” 

“Pass the butter!” advised Mamie Dunn, 
springing the old joke on Maude. 

Maude, however, was not to be so easily si- 
lenced on this occasion. She rose up haughtily, her 
usually colorless face ugly with splotches of red. 

“Let me tell you — all you smartles,” she said, 
greatly enraged — “that this has been a most un- 


SUSPICION HOVERS 


233 

fairly conducted contest. You all know it. Suc- 
cess has not gone to the best player, but to one 
who is, in some mysterious way, momentarily pop- 
ular. Perhaps it is out of pity for her poverty 
that Miss Baldwin has been given the place on the 
first team, a place that belongs to a better player.” 

‘‘Yourself, for instance?” drawled Molly. 
“With two fumbles and three interferences to your 
credit when you were last tried out?” 

“Not my fault!” snapped back Maude. 

“Oh, hush, Grimshaw!” advised a senior. 
“You’re making yourself ridiculous; don’t you 
know that? And Miss Carroll is looking this 
way.” 

“Let Miss Carroll hear,” hissed Maude. “All 
the teachers had better hear. We are supposed 
to be decently honest in this school ; but all of us 
are not.” 

“Hear! hear!” interposed somebody, sotto 
<uoce. “Confession is good for the soul.” 

“You think you are smart!” flared up Maude, 
looking around without identifying the speaker. 
“But perhaps it would be just as well if some in- 
quiry were made as to why this new member of the 
first basket-ball team came to be turned out of Sev- 
ern Lodge and forbidden even to go there again. 
Oh ! I know what I am talking about — and so 
does she.” 


234 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

With this last phrase spoken in a most insolent 
way, Maude stalked from the table. Molly 
jumped up to follow her, “spitting like a bad fire- 
cracker,” as somebody said; but Beth pulled her 
back into her seat. 

“Now Maude’s exploded again,” said Stella, 
wearily. “Don’t follow her example please, 
Molly Granger.” 

“Pshaw! she is not worth worrying about. Miss 
Baldwin,” declared another girl. 

But a whisper went around the table. It had 
an echo, too, in Beth’s heart; 

“What did Maude mean about Severn Lodge?” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE traitor's BLOW 

Beth really had her heart and mind so full 
these days that there should not have been room 
for worry over anything that a girl like Maude 
Grimshaw could say. The fact remained, how- 
ever, that Beth was disturbed by Maude’s innu- 
endo. 

Molly had asked : “What could that nasty thing 
mean, Beth, about Mrs. Severn?” 

“I don’t know,” her chum honestly replied. “I 
can’t imagine.” 

“Humph! just some of her spleen, I guess. 
She’s heard you weren’t working there any more 
on Saturdays and so just made something up out 
of whole cloth.” 

So they passed it over. Molly evidently heard 
no more about it during the next week, for she did 
not broach the subject again to Beth. But the 
latter felt that there was a cabal of some nature 
against her among Maude’s “Me toos.” 

Beth practised with the first basket-ball team 
every day, and Miss Hammersly herself came to 
235 


236 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

watch the play and pronounce judgment. She was 
very much pleased with the smooth work of the 
five and applauded vigorously. 

The whole school took a deep interest in the 
practice games; but the general applause grew 
noticeably fainter day after day, when Beth 
chanced to make a good play. Molly Granger and 
a number of her close friends, who were frequently 
on the side lines together, cheered Beth to the 
echo. But they finally became quite alone in their 
applause. 

Beth herself had noticed the coldness of her 
fellow-students before this. She discovered it in 
other ways besides the lack of applause on the bas- 
ket-ball court. 

A girl who had promised her some work did not 
bring it to Number Eighty and Beth asked her 
about it. 

“Miss Rice, I can mark those handkerchiefs for 
you now, if you like,” Beth said. “Shall I come 
for them, or will you bring them to me?” 

The girl spoken to flushed and hesitated. “Oh 
— I — well — I’ve changed my mind. Miss Bald- 
win,” she stammered. “I guess I won’t have them 
done just now.” 

“Oh, dear me !” laughed Beth, “if it is a matter 
of a lack of the essential pin-money just now. I’ll 
trust you. I have to do such work when I can, you 


THE TRAITOR’S BLOW 237 

know, and often we girls have spent all our im- 
mediate allowances.” 

“No, Miss Baldwin. I don’t want the hand- 
kerchiefs done at all,” said Miss Rice, tartly. “I 
prize them rather highly — they were sent to me 
from Paris. I don’t think I care to risk them out 
of my own possession.” 

Nothing could be plainer than this. Beth was 
aware that Miss Rice was frequently in Maude 
Grimshaw’s company. The lesson to be drawn 
was obvious. 

All the girls of Rivercliff were not followers of 
“Princess Fancyfoot.” Yet it was plain enough be- 
fore the day of the game between the school’s first 
team and the one from Jackson City, that Beth 
was not a favorite on the basket-ball team. 

Whether Miss Crossleigh, the instructor, no- 
ticed it or not, she said nothing. Teachers cannot 
always take note of girlish feuds and rivalries. 

A match game between the teams of rival 
schools brought to the Rivercliff athletic field many 
friends of the girls. Miss Hammersly had had a 
grand stand erected to overlook both the basket- 
ball and tennis courts, which were inside the cinder 
path. The weather was fine, the sport was popu- 
lar, and the field made a brilliant picture on this 
crisp October afternoon. 

Beth’s mates on the basket-ball team showed her 


238 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

frank good fellowship — that was one good thing. 
Otherwise, she could not have played as brilliantly 
as she did that day. The opposition to her that 
developed among her own fellow-students as the 
game went on only served to spur her to greater 
efforts. 

In the first half the Rivercliff team was out- 
matched. There was a weak spot in the home 
team, but not in Beth Baldwin’s corner. Yet al- 
most the whole school was unfriendly toward her. 

“All ready?” demanded the referee, and at the 
signal the ball was thrown into play. 

Although the play was fast and furious from 
the very start, at first neither side scored. Then 
the umpire halted the play with ; 

“Foul on Rivercliff for over guarding!” 

It was really a shock to the school five. “Do 
get together, girls!” begged Maxine Laval, the 
captain. 

But their opponents got the ball and shot it 
basketward. Right from the field the Jackson 
City Academy five made a basket. And follow- 
ing it — within a half minute — they made a second. 

“Break it up, guards ! Do !” groaned Maxine. 

Maxine herself made a brilliant play the next 
moment, and her friends on the benches and side 
lines showed their approval wildly. And then a 
basket was made splendidly by Beth. 


THE TRAITOR’S BLOW 239 

Silence. For a moment, dead silence. Then 
Molly led a weak and forlorn applause. But the 
snub of the little brunette beauty, who was playing 
so well and vigorously, was so plain that the entire 
audience marked it. 

Whispering among the elders, laughter among 
the girls, followed the incident. The whistle 
called the half with the home five badly behind. 
The visitors scored six points over them. 

In the dressing room allotted to the Rivercliff 
five. Miss Crossleigh thanked them for their work 
and encouraged them. 

‘‘There seems to be some schoolgirl foolishness 
afoot,” the instructor added, rather sharply. “One 
of us seems to be unpopular ” 

“Miss Crossleigh,” said Beth, quickly, “if you 
think that I had better retire and let a substitute 
take my place ” 

“No, no !” the other girls of the team cried. 

“Why, Beth Baldwin!” Maxine said, warmly, 
“you have done better than any of us. Isn’t that 
so. Miss Crossleigh?” 

“I will not say that,” said the lady, smiling. 
“You have each done your best, I believe, and I 
want you to keep at it. Show them that although 
they may win this game from us you are all good 
sports. Of course. Miss Baldwin will finish the 
game.” 


240 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

And cheered somewhat by this, when the whistle 
announced the game was on for the second half, 
Beth went out with renewed vigor. Almost at 
once she got another basket. This time there was 
a pronounced hiss from one group on the benches. 
Needless to say Maude Grimshaw was the central 
figure of that group. 

But the friends of the visiting girls began to 
understand the opposition to Beth by her own 
party. They applauded Beth themselves, and 
when the game was over (and it was not such a 
bad beating the Rivercliff team received, after all, 
thanks to Beth’s good playing), every member of 
the opposing team insisted upon shaking hands 
with the girl who had fought them the hardest. 

Almost everybody was late to supper that even- 
ing; but notably the losing team in the afternoon’s 
game, and Maude Grimshaw and several of her 
“Me toos.” In fact, Maude herself did not ap- 
pear at all, and Miss Carroll slipped into her place 
at table. 

“That table would have just buzzed if Carroll 
ladn’t sat there,” Molly Granger announced, when 
the meal was over and the girls were trooping up- 
stairs to the general recreation room on the second 
floor. 

The elements of the game that afternoon were 
busily discussed; but as several of the teachers 


THE TRAITOR’S BLOW 


241 


were present right up to the time the half-past 
eight bell rang, when the girls retired to their 
rooms, any particular talk regarding Beth had to 
be postponed by either friends or enemies. 


CHAPTER XXV 


BEFORE THE JUDGMENT SEAT 

As for Beth herself, when she left the table, 
Miss Carroll spoke to her: 

“See Miss Hammersly in the office at once. Miss 
Baldwin. It is imperative.” 

“Yes, Miss Carroll,” Beth said, and went to 
the interview with apparent calmness. 

Miss Hammersly was sitting under the shaded 
light at her desk, making notes upon a tablet. As 
Beth entered, the school principal arose quickly so 
that the shadow fell across her face, while the girl 
stood in the full glare of the lamp. 

“Beth!” 

“Yes, Miss Hammersly.” 

“I have called you here upon a serious mat- 
ter.” 

“Yes.” 

“Do you know the meaning of this afternoon’s 
exhibition of disloyalty and bad taste on the ath- 
letic field?” 

Beth did not dodge the issue. “I understand. 
Miss Hammersly,” she said, “that some of the 
242 


BEFORE THE JUDGMENT SEAT 243 

girls say I am dishonest. It has something to do 
with Mrs. Severn. What it means, I do not 
know.” 

. Beth’s lips were quivering, but she spoke 
bravely. Miss Hammersly stared straight at her 
for fully a minute. She saw the black eyes dim, 
lose their sparkle, and overflow with slow tears 
that found their courses, one by one, down the 
girl’s cheeks. 

The principal of Rivercliff School was not given 
to sentiment — as a practice. But she suddenly 
came close to Beth and put both arms about her in 
a motherly way. 

“My poor child!” she said. “You are much to 
be pitied, I believe. I know that you are maligned. 
You have no knowledge at all of what this exhi- 
bition against you on the part of your school- 
mates means?” 

“Not at all. Miss Hammersly.” 

“We will see Mrs. Severn together and find out 
the facts,” declared the principal. 

“Mrs. Severn!” 

“Yes. Some of your schoolmates have got hold 
of something that evidently had its origin at Sev- 
ern Lodge. It came by way of the back stairs, of 
course — from one servant to another. It is dis- 
graceful enough,” continued Miss Hammersly 
with indignation, “that any of my girls should Hs- 


244 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

ten to servants’ gossip; and worse still that they 
should allow it to influence their minds against a 
fellow-student. 

“We cannot call on Mrs. Severn to-night, Beth. 
She is a semi-invalid and probably retires early. 
But we will go to-morrow afternoon.” 

“Oh, Miss Hammerslyl It is so kind of 
you ” 

“No, Beth. I cannot claim any such virtue in 
the case. I must defend the characters of my 
pupils for my own sake — for the school’s sake. 
And in this case, my dear, I will defend you for 
your sake; for I am sure you are guiltless of any 
intended wrong.” 

Miss Hammersly and Beth went together in an 
automobile the following afternoon to Mrs. Sev- 
ern’s home. It was true that, when they entered, 
the footman seemed to place himself before Beth 
as though to ward her from the stairs, while the 
ever-watchful foreign maid hissed from the head 
of the stairs : 

“Miz Baldwig ees not to come up, Jeems!” 

But Miss Hammersly handed her card to the 
footman, saying sternly: 

“Announce me to your mistress. Give that card 
to nobody else !” 

The maid, casting a malevolent glance at Beth, 
backed out of sight. The big footman started up 


BEFORE THE JUDGMENT SEAT 245 

the stairs, the very calves of his legs in their silk 
stockings trembling in indignation. But the school 
principal and Beth were immediately ushered into 
the presence of the mistress of Severn Lodge. 

Mr. Montague, upside down as usual, shrieke.d 
a greeting in his most appalling fashion. The 
gouty one threw a cushion at his cage; but possibly 
owing to nervousness, she missed it. 

“Shut up, Mr. Dennis Montague !” she cried. 

“Dennis Mudd ! Dennis Mudd !” screamed the 
parrot. Then, soulfully: 

“The noble Duke of York, 

He had ten thousand men. 

He marched them up a hill one day. 

Then he marched them down — 
Too-roo-lal-roo-lal-larry ! Johnny come home to 
teal’’ 

After this long speech the creature was breath- 
less, and the lady of the mansion and Miss Ham- 
mersly could converse. The former asked neither 
of her guests to sit down, nor did she, indeed, 
glance at Beth. 

“I do not understand this call. Miss Ham- 
mersly!” said Mrs. Severn, haughtily. 

“I propose to explain myself very quickly. 
Madam,” said the school principal, quite as 


246 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

haughtily. “When you sent to inquire of me re- 
garding Miss Baldwin last June, after she had 
gone home, why did you not explain your reason 
for so doing? Why leave me to find out this cal- 
umny against one of my pupils, Mrs. Severn, until 
now, and through such mean channels?” 

“What do you mean. Miss Hammersly, by 
‘mean channels,’ pray?” croaked Mrs. Severn. 

“Pray I Pray, I say I” croaked the parrot, in a 
voice scarcely less harsh. 

“Shut up, Mr. Montague!” 

“Shut up yourself!” returned the parrot, who 
had now come out of the cage and was walking 
along the mopboard of the room, pecking at the 
carpet. 

“I do not think I need explain,” said Miss Ham- 
mersly. “Through your servants the story has 
reached my serving people, and, of course, some 
of the more thoughtless of my girls. Miss Bald- 
win does not know now of what you accuse her.” 

“She should be glad I did not send a policeman 
after her!” cried Mrs. Severn, in weak rage. 

“You should be glad. Madam, that I do not in- 
stitute suit for slander against you on Miss Bald- 
win’s behalf — and that I certainly will do if you 
continue to repeat your accusation.” 

“Oh, Miss Hammersly!” begged Beth, in tears 
now. “Of what am I accused?” 


BEFORE THE JUDGMENT SEAT 247 

“Of stealing a diamond sunburst. She says it 
is missing since the last Saturday you were here 
in June.” 

Beth’s gaze flashed to the neck of Mrs. Sev- 
ern’s gown. The old-fashioned pin she usually 
wore was missing. 

“Oh! that is awful!” the girl murmured. 

“No, it is not,” Miss Hammersly said sternly. 
“It is merely unjust — and actionable. I have 
come here to tell you, Mrs. Severn, that you must 
write Miss Baldwin an apology, stating that you 
have no evidence that she had anything to do with 
the disappearance of your pin. This disavowal 
1 will read to my girls. And I will send home any 
one of them who dares repeat the calumny upon 
Miss Baldwin’s character.” 

Mrs. Severn, very angry, tried to be dignified, 
while the parrot went into a spasm of laughter in 
the corner of the bay window. But Miss Ham- 
mersly had been managing people — and getting 
her own way with them, too — for twenty years. 
She and Beth finally left the house with just the 
paper the school principal had demanded. 

On Monday morning after prayers. Miss Ham- 
mersly gave the entire school a lecture on the evils 
of gossip and read Mrs. Severn’s written acknowl- 
edgment of the wrong she had done Beth. Maude 
Grimshaw was very much subdued just at this 


248 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

time. If the story of the lost pin and the accusa- 
tion against Beth was repeated, it was done so in 
secret, thereafter. 

The wound, however, remained open in Beth’s 
soul. It was hard for even such a sweet nature 
as her’s to overlook and forgive the treatment she 
had received at the hands of many of her school- 
mates. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR 

It may have been well for Beth Baldwin’s ad- 
vancement in her studies and for her financial 
prosperity, that the foregoing incidents had taken 
place. It shut the young girl more within herself 
and left her mind freer for study and work. 

Those girls who were sorry and ashamed be- 
cause of countenancing a mean act, even to a slight 
degree, tried at first to shower favors upon the 
occupant of Number Eighty, South Wing; at least, 
they all brought her work for her needle. But 
Beth knew her friends now — there was no question 
of that. They were few, and they were loyal, but 
they took up very little of Beth’s time. 

As the term progressed she secured other and 
better paying occupation for her free hours, and 
outside of school. But she heard nothing more 
from Mrs. Ricardo Severn nor of the lost sun- 
burst. 

Molly and she sometimes talked about it. The 
mystery, if not the suspicion, still overhung Beth. 
She was inclined to believe that the foreign maid 
249 


250 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

might know more about the disappearance of the 
sunburst than anybody else. 

“She may not have stolen it because she wished 
to profit financially by the deed,” Beth said to 
Molly. “But for some reason she always showed 
her dislike for me, and she may have done this de- 
liberately to ruin me in Mrs. Severn’s estimation.” 

“I don’t know who else would have done it — 
unless it was that parrot you tell about,” Molly 
said, laughing shortly. 

Beth did not go home for the Christmas holi- 
days because of her outside work, and at Easter, 
the intermission was too short to make a visit to 
Hudsonvale worth while. 

News from home continued to be encouraging 
throughout the school year. Mr. Baldwin stead- 
ily improved in health, for he worked out of doors. 
He never went back to the Locomotive Works, 
but the family managed very well, indeed. There 
was hope of something being done with one of 
his inventions. Larry Haven had an interest in 
that, and Beth knew that Larry had supplied the 
funds for the patent fees and other necessary ex- 
penses connected with the matter. 

On her part, Beth was doing splendidly. Miss 
Hammersly was vastly pleased with her standing 
in her classes. From the time they had visited 
Mrs. Ricardo Severn — and Mr. Montague— to- 


ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR 2 5 1 

gether, Beth and the school principal had been 
very good friends, indeed. Miss Hammersly sel- 
dom displayed so much affection for any pupil as 
she did for Beth. 

Molly was doing well, too, and at the close of 
the second year in June Beth stood first in her 
class and Molly was not far down on the roster. 

“But it never would have happened, Bethesda, 
if it hadn’t been for you. I was ashamed to be left 
so far behind a girl who had so much on her hands 
when I had so little. But I am afraid it has made 
me very serious-minded,” and she shook her head 
gloomily. 

“Oh, nonsense. Jolly Molly I” laughed Beth. 
“You will never be a ‘grave and reverend seign- 
ior’ — and because of more than the disbarment of 
sex. A senior you will be ; but always a jolly one.” 

“Nay, nay, my child!” quoth Molly. “When I 
come back to Rivercliff next autumn, I shall begin 
signing myself, ‘J. Molly Granger.’ I shall aban- 
don my full name, and let my jocundity be repre- 
sented by an initial only.” 

When Beth went to Hambro that second sum- 
mer, however, for a brief visit with Molly and 
the aunts, she could not descry much change in her 
chum. 

The summer was a busy one and a happy one 
for Beth. Her mother had held together the cus- 


252 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

tomers Beth had obtained the year previous. In- 
deed, there was a neat sign on the front door of 
the Bemis Street cottage, and almost daily car- 
riages and automobiles from the better residential 
section of the town stopped before the house. 
Ella was learning to help in the work, too, and lit- 
tle Prissy v/as becoming a perfect housewife. The 
twins, Ferd and Fred, were sturdy youngsters, 
going to school and being helpful in vacation time 
in the garden. Marcus was a manly fellow and — 
whisper! — he had actually bought a safety razor I 

That summer Beth found that she was more 
popular than ever in her home town. Mr. Lomax 
asked her to meet his class of girls who would 
graduate from the high school the next year, and 
tell them something about what it meant to attend 
a boarding school. It was at a lawn party, and 
a good many older people were present. 

Beth did her best to inspire the girls with a 
desire to do as she had done. Some of them 
would have to follow her methods to a certain ex- 
tent, for their parents were too poor to pay their 
full tuition at any school or seminary. 

“I believe the prize is worth the work entailed, 
however,” Beth said, in the course of her simple 
address. “If I could not go back for my final 
year at Rivercliff I should feel well repaid for my 
struggle thus far. But if I am allowed to finish 


ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR 2 53 

my course, I know I shall be better able to face 
the world and make my own way in it than I pos- 
sibly could do if I had been prepared by any other 
means. 

“The business college course is cheap and 
quickly gained; but the classical and English 
courses in a properly conducted school which con- 
fers an academic degree fit one for a better and 
higher position in business or professional life.” 

Rather to her chagrin, but to Ella’s great de- 
light, the county paper printed Beth’s speech in 
part. The flyaway sister went around repeating 
extracts from it, and proclaiming to all who would 
listen that Beth was bound to be an orator. 

“A lecturer, anyway,” she insisted. “Our Beth 
will soon adorn the platform. In spectacles and 
a cap and gown, she will lead her sisters in charges 
for women’s rights, lecture on the noise nuisance, 
plead before legislatures for freedom from the 
trammels of fashion 

“By the way, B. B., Larry says that frock of 
yours is just stunning.” 

“Oh, does he?” returned her sister, placidly. 

“Yes. I think you are snubbing Larry.” 

“I have no time for boys,” responded Beth. 

“Boys! No less!” 

“Larry is a boy to me,” Beth declared, in her 
very haughtiest way. 


254 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“I don’t care,” said Ella, mischievously. “He 
is beginning to come to me for comfort when you 
throw him down.” 

It really did seem as though Larry Haven was 
striving to show Beth that he had not lost his in- 
terest in her or in her career. When Beth first 
came home that second summer, Larry was fre- 
quently at the Baldwin cottage. Whether Beth 
actually snubbed him, or not, as Ella said, he dis- 
appeared soon after, going away for a long outing 
with Mrs. Haven; so the Baldwins did not see him 
again until Beth had gone back to Rivercliff in 
September. 

Rather to Beth’s surprise, Larry wrote to her 
soon after she reached school — something he had 
not done for fully a year and a half. The letter 
sounded just as though their old intimacy had 
never been broken, and that the young lawyer was 
still quite as much her friend and well-wisher as 
ever. 

She was, for some time, undecided whether to 
answer or not, and how to answer. But finally 
she replied in a pleasant, brief letter. Larry’s 
epistle was like himself — exuberant: 

“The Mater lugged me around from one water- 
ing place to another this summer — there was no 
getting away from her, poor dear I — and kept me 


ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR 25 5 

at it so late that you had flitted from the home nest 
on Bemis Street when I got back to Hudsonvale 
and my clamoring clients. I never go away on a 
vacation without expecting to find the heaped-up 
bodies of exhausted and desperate clients before 
my office door in the Hudsonvale Block. How- 
ever, all I found were several insistent roaches 
from the bakery downstairs and heaps of dust, for 
I declare, Devine had not been in to clean up for 
a month ! 

“What I started to tell you about, Beth, was a 
girl I met at Saratoga. Fact is, it was the second 
time I had met her. I am almost tempted to de- 
clare it was the third. I spoke to you once of 
Miss Emeline Freylinghausen. Do you remem- 
ber the girl who passed me coming out of River- 
cliff School when I was going in the day I called 
to see you? Do you remember her? You said 
she was a servant, just discharged. 

“Well, if you could once see Miss Freyling- 
hausen, you’d say she was the speaking image of 
that person — that maid-servant ! I had met Miss 
Freylinghausen in New York; and now I have 
seen a good bit of her at Saratoga. She is an odd 
girl — frank, I should say, and rather blunt in 
speech — but not at all the sort of girl that one 
could put this question to : ‘Have you ever been a 
servant-maid?’ Ha! ha! Ho! ho! and likewise 


256 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

He! he! Fancy asking that of one of the Frey- 
llnghausens of Philadelphia ! 

“Yet, to tell the truth, Beth, that was exactly 
what I was tempted to ask. Not particularly be- 
cause Miss Freylinghausen looks so much like that 
discharged maid I saw at Rivercliff, but because 
the Philadelphia heiress has taken up what she 
calls a serious work in life. It’s quite the fad, I 
believe, nowadays for girls like her to do social 
work and the like. She has a hobby, and has inter- 
ested the Mater in it, too. At least, I hear that 
Miss Freylinghausen is to appear at Hudsonvale 
some time this coming winter to prance a little on 
her hobby-horse for the delectation of the Hudson- 
vale ladies.” 

A good deal more there was in the same strain 
in Larry’s sprightly letter; and it was all interest- 
ing to Beth. But this about Miss Freylinghausen 
and her resemblance to Cynthia Fogg, was what 
impressed Beth the most; for she chanced to re- 
member now that it was Maude Grimshaw who 
had first noticed that resemblance between Cynthia 
and the heiress to the Freylinghausen millions. 

Beth had not heard from Cynthia since the year 
before. That odd girl seemed to have quite 
dropped out of her life; yet somehow Beth had a 
feeling that they would meet again. Madam 


ROUNDING OUT ANOTHER YEAR 257 

Hammersly had told Beth once that no holiday 
went by but that she received a card or some little 
remembrance from Cynthia; but an address was 
never added to the strange girl’s signature. 

As for Maude Grimshaw, she did not appear at 
Rivercliff at the opening of this fall semester. It 
was whispered that her marks had been so low the 
spring previous that she could not have gone on 
with her class without many conditions, and would 
have been dropped before Christmas. 

So there passed out of Beth’s school life a very 
unpleasant and annoying influence. Yet, who was 
to say that Maude Grimshaw’s treatment of the 
girl from Hudsonvale had not been good discipline 
for the latter? 


CHAPTER XXVII 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 

Beth entered her senior year in high feather 
'2,nd with her affairs at full sea. She had saved 
more than enough money to pay for her full year’s 
tuition. There would be less time during her sen- 
ior course to devote to the earning of money; but 
what she could accumulate these coming nine 
months would go toward the payment of that sup- 
posed loan of four hundred dollars that had 
always been a burden on her mind. 

Beth had met Mrs. Euphemia Haven once the 
preceding summer, and all the time the girl was 
in Mrs. Haven’s company, her cheeks burned as 
she thought that she was beholden to Larry’s 
mother. 

“If I ever owe anybody again, or use money 
borrowed from anybody, no matter who,” Beth 
told Molly, who was her confidant; “it will be be- 
cause I am lame in both feet, like Jonathan’s son, 
because I have as many boils as Job, and am as 
bald as Elijah must have been.” 

“Goodness, Beth I don’t say such dreadful 
258 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 


259 

things/’ begged Molly. “And out of the Scrip- 
tures, too. It sounds irreverent.” 

Beth’s standing in class naturally gave her a 
long lead for the presidency of the seniors. Not 
that mere scholarship counts high for that hon- 
ored position; but Beth had been steadily growing 
in popularity with the students in general of River- 
cliff School, and with her own classmates in par- 
ticular. 

Without Maude Grimshaw to form a cabal 
against her, there really was little opposition to 
Beth when “J. Molly Granger,” as the jolly one 
signed her name to the typewritten notice on the 
board, launched her chum’s boom. Laura Red- 
den, Izola Pratt, Miss Rice, and several others 
who had been Maude’s most faithful “Me toos,” 
failed to raise much of a barrier against the rising 
flood of Beth’s popularity. Besides, they could 
not settle upon an opposing candidate. 

Therefore, six weeks after the term opened, 
Beth was elected to the class presidency. The sen- 
ior class entertained the other older pupils in the 
drawing rooms. There was music, and dancing, 
and 

“Real men for partners !” sighed Molly, ecstat- 
ically. “Think of it ! We seniors may dance with 
the male visitors — if we are asked !” 

Beth had a new dress — black and silver. Molly 


±6o GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


said it was “a dream.” And certainly her bru- 
nette chum did look lovely in it. Although Beth 
and Mrs. Baldwin had made it themselves, it was 
a gown with which any professional dressmaker 
might have been satisfied. 

There was just one thing missing. Beth had 
told Mrs. Baldwin there would be when the frock 
was tried on before she left home. Great-grand- 
mother Lomis’ corals would have given just the 
touch needed to make Beth, as Ella declared, 
“fairly splendiferous.” 

But Mrs. Baldwin had not seemed to see it 
Beth’s way. The latter felt that she was now old 
enough to wear the heirloom. She felt hurt that 
her mother did not get it for her; but she con- 
tented herself on the occasion of this first senior 
reception, by wearing a band of coral-hued velvet 
about her throat. Her dusky shoulders gleamed 
exquisitely under the black lace that a wealthy cus- 
tomer had given her; her silver-figured, short- 
waisted gown hung gracefully about her as she 
walked. She was all a-sparkle when, just as the 
music for the first dance struck up, she appeared 
before Miss Hammersly, who, with several of the 
teachers, was receiving. 

“My dear Beth,” said the principal, tapping 
Beth’s bare arm with her fan, “I have a partner 
for you. He has been begging the honor and I 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 


261 


cannot refuse — although his name may cause you 
an unpleasant thought. But that is all over now, 
I hope.” 

Beth looked startled for a moment. The very 
good looking young man beside the principal was 
quite unknown to her. 

“Mr. Severn,” said Miss Hammersly, “Miss 
Baldwin. Mr. Severn is Mrs. Ricardo Severn’s 
nephew.” 

“Oh! the nephew who renamed the parrot!” 
gasped the blushing Beth. 

“Right !” cried the young fellow, his eyes twink- 
ling. “Really, we, as a family, are insufferably 
snobbish. So I determined to save Mr. Montague 
from that sin.” 

“Dennis Mudd!” laughed Beth. “Dear me! 
I think he hated me.” 

“He does not love me,” confessed Mr. Severn, 
“though I did finish his education.” 

“And that foreign person ” 

“You mean Saronie, the maid?” 

“Yes; she seemed fairly to hate me. I wonder 
why?” 

“We have much in common,” declared the 
young man, “you and I, Miss Baldwin. Saronie 
does not fancy me. I think it is because Mrs. Ri- 
cardo, when she shuffles off this mortal coil, will 
have much personal property to give away.” 


262 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


Beth found young Mr. Severn a very amusing 
person. She danced three times with him, and 
then refused him as a partner for the rest of the 
evening. “Why, you’re as bad as Mr. Monta- 
gue,” she told him. “You want everything and 
everybody your own way.” 

The reception was an unqualified success, and 
Beth was established in the popularity of her class. 
Even the wealthiest and dressiest girls had to ad- 
mit that “Baldwin shines with the best.” 

Beth was destined to see more of Roland Sev- 
ern. Usually young men did not ruffle the shel- 
tered waters of Rivercliff School life. They were 
looked upon by Miss Hammersly and the madam 
as pirate craft, and were warned off the shoals 
quite gallantly by the whole faculty of the school. 

But this was the winter that the Nessing River 
froze over so solidly that all navigation as high 
up as Rivercliff ceased before the first day of De- 
cember. There was no snow, and the surface of 
the broad stream was like glass. The girls of 
Rivercliff School were on the ice every hour they 
could spare from their studies. 

The bend, between the landing and the point 
on this side of the river, was free of ice-boats at 
all times, for in rounding the point sailing in either 
direction, the scooters and larger craft had to 
make a wide detour. 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 


263 

This bend proved to be the best stretch of ice 
on the river, and Jackson City people came down, 
strung colored electric lamps along the shore, 
erected booths and shelters, and on moonlight 
evenings the scene at the foot of the bluff on which 
Rivercliff School stood was a gay one, indeed. 

The ice carnival lasted several weeks, and at- 
tracted visitors from far and near. Miss Ham- 
mersly was very careful about allowing the girls, 
even the seniors, to go on the ice in the evening; 
never allowing more than ten to go together, and 
always with one of the teachers for chaperon. 

It was on these occasions that Beth met Roland 
Severn. Beth always had Molly with her. The 
latter began to write her name with the letters 
F. W. after it. 

“For pity’s sake, Molly Granger! what do they 
mean?” asked somebody in Beth’s hearing. 

“Fifth Wheel,” announced Molly, gravely. 

“ ‘Fifth Wheel?’ ” 

“Yes. Don’t you see how much use I am when 
we go skating? Mr. Severn looks at me, some- 
times, as though I were something the cat had 
brought in.” 

But who could have carried tales of Roland Sev- 
ern’s attentions to Beth as far as Hudsonvale? 
After about a fortnight of this sport at the ice car- 
nival a tall young man with light hair, a fur cap 


264 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

and huge gloves, who could skate almost as well 
as the professional teacher who gave exhibitions 
each evening after nine o’clock, appeared. 

“Larry Haven!” cried Beth, fairly falling into 
his arms to save herself from a tumble, she was 
so surprised. 

Questions and answers volleyed from each. 
Larry claimed to have come up to Jackson City 
“on a case.” Every one was well. He was going 
to stay at a hotel for several days and expected to 
have each evening free. 

Molly Granger tapped Mr. Severn softly on 
the sleeve. “Come away, little Roland,” she whis- 
pered. “That is a sure-enough lawyer-man who 
used to pull Beth to school on his sled. You and 
I are still school children. Come away from 
here — and I will weep with you.” 

Beth bore Larry off to Miss Carroll, who 
chanced to be with the party on this evening; and 
the young lawyer came to Rivercliff School by ap- 
pointment, was welcomed by the madam, who 
graciously remembered him, and was introduced 
to Miss Hammersly herself. 

Larry remained much in evidence until the 
school broke up for the Christmas and New Year 
holidays. But it cannot be said that Beth bestowed 
any great amount of attention upon him, after all. 
The other girls pronounced him “just dear.” 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 265 

Beth was in training for the skating races that 
the skating committee, with the help of Miss 
Crossleigh, of the school had arranged for. Skat- 
ing had always been popular at Rivercliff ; and now 
that it had gained such general approval there was 
not much else talked about outside of study hours 
and the classroom. 

Beth, in her first winter at RiverclifF, had shown 
her superiority in skating over many of her class- 
mates ; but now she had a number of rivals. Both 
the long distance and short distance races were 
going to be hotly contested. As for the exhibitions 
of fancy skating, Beth did not participate in them 
at all. She saved her strength, skill and wind for 
the real work on the races. 

Miss Hammersly lent her support to the affair, 
as she did to everything in the way of athletics 
that was of physical benefit to her girls. 

The races were at night, for it was then that 
there could be the most brilliant display upon the 
ice. A thousand electric lamps, the power sup- 
plied from the trolley company’s plant up the 
river, aided a cold and brilliant December moon 
in illuminating the icefield that night. 

Other races had been held before, and hockey 
games and other sports; but nothing previously 
arranged drew so great a crowd as the Rivercliff 
School ice sports. The school was the most popu- 


266 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


lar establishment in that part of the State, and 
largest. The sports drew the friends of the school 
for many miles around, as well as hundreds from 
Jackson City, and practically all of the hamdet 
at Rivercliff landing that could get to the riverside 
without the aid of crutches. 

Larry had remained for this event. Indeed, it 
being but two days to the closing of the term, he 
had planned a surprise for Beth — and that sur- 
prise had been confided only to Miss Hammersly, 
for her permission had to be obtained. 

First came the races, however ; and that glorious 
night would long be remembered in the annals of 
Rivercliff School. “It will be sung in song and 
story,” Molly Granger proclaimed, afterward. 

“How can it be ‘sung in story,* Granger?” de- 
manded one carping critic. 

“In recitative,” responded Molly, quickly. 

Molly herself was a contestant in several of the 
‘events of the evening. She was not a very rapid 
skater; but she was sure on her skates, and she 
had learned many fancy strokes. One of her best 
feats was when she and Stella Price waltzed very 
prettily together on the ice. 

It was the fifty and the one hundred yard 
dashes, and the two-mile race around a measured 
oval on the ice, that held the deepest attention 
of the throng that had come to view these trials 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 267 

of speed. The dashes were from a flying start, 
of course. In the fifty yard Beth was second; in 
the hundred yard she was first— by a good lead. 
Later, when the contestants for the two-mile race 
were started, she was one of the favorites. 

There were twenty starters, and they were all 
good skaters. The little, dark, ugly girl, Laura 
Hedden, who had been such a friend of Maude 
Grimshaw, was next to Beth in the line. 

Spitefulness breeds spitefulness. Laura could 
not have told why she “hated that Baldwin girl;” 
but she had been so well taught by the absent 
Maude that she considered Beth her particular 
enemy now. 

As they got off, Laura’s left skate clashed 
with Beth’s right. Both girls might have been 
thrown; but Beth recovered herself instantly on 
the other foot and darted off — only a stroke be- 
hind the best of the starters. Laura began to 
shriek : 

“Foul! Foul! Baldwin fouled me! ’Tisn’t 
fair !” 

As it chanced. Miss Crossleigh and one of the 
official starters had seen the accident. 

“You are the one who fouled. Miss Hedden,” 
said the instructor, tartly. “You may race or not 
as you please. I do not think it was intentional on 
yout part.” 


268 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


But Laura had wasted so much time calling 
aloud that she was injured, it was useless for her 
to attempt the race. Most of the skaters were 
already half a lap away. But Laura found friends 
among the other girls and some in the crowd of 
spectators, to hold up her contention that she had 
been fouled by Beth Baldwin. 

Luckily, Beth knew nothing about this at the 
time. In her short, close-fitting sweater and cap, 
with her scant skirt, her gloved hands clenched, 
she had shot away in the immediate wake of the 
other girls, scarcely noticing her clash of skates 
with Laura. 

At the far turn on the first lap she “crossed the 
bows” of several of the other contestants, and took 
the inside of the course. She knew enough about 
fancy skating to take short turns without falter- 
ing, and in such a brief race as two miles she be- 
lieved the struggle would be close all the way. 

And it was. At the second turn (it was two 
laps to the mile), Beth was among the leaders — 
seven of the best skaters in the school. Every girl 
tried to do her best. 

The end of the first mile saw Beth and Miss 
Rice elbow to elbow. There were others near; 
but the race was really between these two from 
this point to the end. 

Sometimes Beth would forge a foot or two 



THERE WAS A WHITE IJNE BEFORE HER! IT WAS THE TAPE. 

Pagre 269. 





THE ICE CARNIVAL 


269 

ahead; sometimes Miss Rice would make a spurt. 

It was grilling work. Beth could not shake off 
her rival and began to feel her own strength wan- 
ing. She had to arouse all her energy and deter- 
mination when she came into the home stretch, the 
last half lap of the two miles, for she was well 
spent. 

The cheering and encouragement came to her 
ears faintly. Luckily, she could not hear what 
Laura Hedden and her supporters were saying. 

It seemed to Beth as though all her strength had 
gone — as though her limbs below her knees were 
merely wooden props which she could barely push 
on. 

She lost sight of the crowd; and the lights 
around the course, which were strung on iron 
pikes driven into the ice, seemed to stand still. 
She heard heavy breathing — seemingly at her very 
ear. Was it Rice? Or was another contestant 
overtaking her? 

Then she realized that it was her own breathing 
she heard. Her lungs were pumping savagely. 
Only a well-trained body, untrammeled by im- 
proper dress, could have stood that strain. 

There was a white line before her! It was the 
tape. 

Where was Rice? Where 

She dashed against the tape, and the next mo- 


270 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

ment Molly and Miss Crossleigh caught her. Miss 
Rice was six yards behind ! 

“One of the fastest two miles ever skated on 
this river, bar none, Miss Baldwin,” the official 
scorer, the sporting editor of the Jackson City 
Daily Mail, announced. “That last half lap you 
made was a wonder.” 

But Beth’s abundant success could not com- 
pletely smother the objections of the small part of 
the school that was opposed to her. It was not 
the last spiteful exhibition of prejudice against 
Beth that ever raised its head at Rivercliff. 

Now that she was breathing easily again and 
the pulse had stopped pounding in her ears, Beth 
could hear something besides applause. The con- 
gratulations of her friends did not entirely quench 
the criticisms of those who sided with Laura 
Hedden. 

The latter was furious. The fact that Miss 
Crossleigh would pay no attention to her an- 
nouncement of unjust treatment urged the stub- 
born and ill-natured girl to claim still greater 
injury than she had in the first place. Indeed, the 
grievance that she herself had manufactured 
against Beth had grown to mountainous propor- 
tions. 

All the way up to the school, after the carnival 
broke up, Beth heard hints and innuendoes re- 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 


271 


garding the unfairness shown in the conduct of the 
two-mile race. At first she did not understand 
it; she only realized that, despite her high stand- 
ing in her class and with most of the girls and the 
teachers, there were still those who considered 
her little less than the “forward pauper” that 
Maude Grimshaw had once called her. 

Although Maude had left Rivercliff, her spirit 
had not been quenched among certain of the older 
girls. “The ill men do lives after them,” is a 
trite and true saying. The bad influence Miss 
Grimshaw had gained over her “Me toos” still 
existed, and hatred of Beth was fostered by Laura 
Hedden and girls of her type. 

In this incident of the race the little, dark, 
unpleasant girl had a personal reason for being 
angry with Beth. She was really a very good 
skater; and had she not stopped at the beginning 
of the race to wrangle over the “foul,” she would 
have stood just as good a chance of winning as 
Beth. 

“But who could win anything at this school 
when all the teachers are prejudiced in the favor 
of just one person?” Laura demanded loudly, as 
the crowd climbed the hilly street to the school. 

“You are quite right, Laura,” agreed another 
girl, who thought she had some cause for enmity 
to the president of the senior class. 


272 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Oh, you can’t beat that Beth Baldwin!” 
laughed a third, nastily. “What do you say. Rice? 
Was that race fairly won?” 

Miss Rice thought she had reason for disliking 
Beth, too. It dated back to the time when she 
had so hurt and insulted the girl from Hudson- 
vale by refusing to trust her handkerchiefs in 
Beth’s possession. Of course, when one has ill- 
treated another, unless one acknowledges his fault, 
the ill-feeling remains. Miss Rice had never 
owned up to her wrong attitude toward Beth. 

And now that she had been beaten by her in 
this very close race, she was thoroughly disap- 
pointed and angry. 

“You can’t expect Miss Crossleigh to be fair 
when Miss Hammersly’s pet is involved, can 
you?” scoffed Miss Rice. “Twice Beth Baldwin 
skated right in front of me. It would have been 
called a foul on the part of any other contestant.” 

Beth, who was within earshot, said nothing. 
She was thankful that Larry and the other boys 
had not been allowed to walk up from the ice with 
the Rivercliff girls. 

Miss Crossleigh and the other teachers were 
well out of hearing,- but Molly Granger was at 
hand. 

“Cracky-me 1” she blurted out. “What ever are 
you talking about, Rice? Don’t you know that 


THE ICE CARNIVAL 


273 


every knock is a boost? You were beaten fairly 
enough, and you’ll only make yourself the laugh- 
ing stock of the whole school if you say such 
things. Of course Beth skated in front of you. 
Especially at the end of the race.” 

This caused some of the other girls to laugh; 
and, naturally, the “knockers” were not pleased. 

“No matter what Beth Baldwin did, Molly 
Granger, you!d back her up,” said Laura Hedden, 
spitefully. 

“You bet I would!” cried the slangy Molly. 
“I’m one good little backer, I am I I’d back up 
Nero if I heard you running him down. I’d know 
for sure that there had been a mistake made in 
history.’’ 

“ ‘R-r-rebecca 1 don’dt fight!’” sing-songed 
Mamie Dunn, through her nose. “You’re as bad 
as the rest of them, Molly. Let it drop.” 

But Laura Hedden and her personal friends, 
as well as Miss Rice and her chums, had no inten- 
tion of giving up their point of view. 

There was a well-defined “party of the oppo- 
sition” to the senior class president and to her sup- 
porters, organized during these few final days of 
the term. Beth Baldwin went home with the feel- 
ing that on her return she would have to face the 
active enmity of a not inconsiderable number of 
her classmates. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


MISS FREYLINGHAUSEN 

Larry^S surprise included a novel way for Beth 
and a dozen of her girl friends to get home for the 
holidays. These girls, besides Beth and Molly, 
lived in the river towns strung along the Nessing 
between the school and Hudsonvale. Larry se- 
cured a huge sleigh in Jackson City and a team of 
well sharpened horses with a sober driver to take 
them down the river on the ice. Miss Hammersly 
approved of the party starting early in the morn- 
ing so as to make Hudsonvale before night. 

The girls could drop off at their several home 
towns, while Molly would remain over night with 
Beth and go on to Hambro — and the seven aunts 
— the next day. Larry was to sit on the driver’s 
seat and act as courier for the party. 

It was an exciting and novel ride, and all the 
girls pronounced it a lovely adventure. They 
thanked Beth as their hostess, for all seemed to 
take it for granted that had it not been for Beth, 
Larry Haven would not have done such a thing. 

There was a crowd to see them off when the 
274 


MISS FREYLINGHAUSEN 


275 

iHe sleigh slid down upon the ice, and in it Molly 
saw Mr. Roland Severn. She beckoned to him 
to come close, and whispered: 

“Grieve not, brave youth I There are other fish 
in the sea quite as good as those already hooked.’* 

“Thank you. Miss Granger. I am quite sure of 
it,” he returned, with gravity. “I shall be in Ham- 
bro before New Year. May I call?” 

“Cracky-me !” Molly was startled into exclaim- 
ing. “I wasn’t looking upon myself in the light of 
a fish, nor do I wish to be so considered.” 

But she had to admit to Beth that Mr. Severn 
was quick at repartee. “It isn’t often that any- 
body gets the best of lil’ Molly. I wonder if I 
could draw a portrait of him — as a cat, of course 
— or perhaps a fish !” 

It was a gay and busy holiday time for Beth. 
The family seemed particularly glad to see her. 
And Beth found a new spirit of hopefulness in the 
little cottage. 

Marcus had been taking a business course at an 
evening school for some time. Young as he was, 
he had been advanced by his employer to the type- 
writer and was drawing eight dollars a week. Mr. 
Baldwin seemed very cheerful, too, and Beth 
thought he seemed a hundred per cent, better. 

Larry and she had been acting the part of very 
good friends for nearly a fortnight; but for two 


276 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

days after her return home Beth did not see the 
young lawyer at all. 

“Was he going to withdraw into his shell 
again?” she queried. She scarcely knew what to 
make of Larry in some of his moods; and she was 
old enough now to resent such conduct. 

But on the third evening Larry appeared at the 
Bemis Street cottage, and evidently in high spirits. 
He brought from his mother a particular and writ- 
ten invitation for Beth to be present at an evening 
function at Mrs. Haven’s, scheduled to occur in 
the week between Christmas and New Year. 

“You ought, really, to have a new dress,” Mrs. 
Baldwin said, all of a flutter. “Euphemia always 
has such nice people at her evening parties.” 

“Tempt me not!” laughed Beth. “I have been 
hobnobbing with the rich so long, that Mrs. Hav- 
en’s dressiest affairs have no terrors for me. Be- 
sides, I can’t afford it. Moreover, the black lace 
and silver is new here in Hudsonvale.” 

“Likewise,” said Ella, with her head on one side 
like a saucy sparrow, “Larry has never seen her 
in that.” 

Beth drove her out of the room then ; but it was 
for another reason. She asked, frankly : “Mamma 
Baldwin, don’t you think I am old enough now to 
wear Great-grandmother Lomis’ corals?” 

Her mother fairly gasped. She sat down sud- 


MISS FREYLINGHAUSEN 277 

denly and looked up into her eldest daughter’s 
face with almost a pleading expression in her 
own. 

“My dear Beth I” she whispered. 

“Mother dear! what is the matter?” demanded 
the girl, a little frightened by her mother’s air. 

“I — I shrink from telling you. Those beautiful 
corals I Been in the family so long 1 And you 
had been led to expect them I” 

Mrs. Baldwin was actually sobbing. Her 
daughter put both arms around her and hugged 
her close. 

“There, there, dear! Never mind! If you 
don’t want me to wear them ” 

“But I’d be glad to have you wear them, 
if ” 

“If what?” 

“If they were yours to wear!” 

“What — what do you mean?” stammered Beth. 

“They had to be sold, my child! I had to sell 
the heirloom that had been so long in our family. 
You will never be able to v/ear the corals again, 
dear Beth.” 

Beth actually swallowed something that seemed 
to choke her. “Oh, my dear !” she said. “I might 
have known you poor folks at home were having 
a worse time than you let selfish me know.” 

“No, no, Beth!” cried Mrs. Baldwin. “They 


278 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

were sold before your father left the Works. 
They were sold to pay your first year’s tuition!” 
almost shouted Beth. 

“Yes, my dear. Forgive me ” 

“Forgive you?” cried the deliriously happy 
Beth, trying to dance her mother about the room. 
“Why, darling little Mumsy! you have freed my 
heart of a great burden of woe 1 I’m glad to go 

to Mrs. Haven’s party to-night 

“What are you saying, child?” 

“Oh, well! I can look everybody straight in 

the eye and tell each and every one Well! 

never mind ! I am happy — so happy !” 

“But, my dear child! Are you crazy? Your 

Great-grandmother’s corals ” 

“Goodness me. Mother mine !” interposed Beth. 
“What do you suppose I care aboi# the old cor- 
als — really? This that you tell me lifts a load 
off my mind. Then you didn’t borrow money to 
send me to Rivercliff ?” 

“No-o.” 

“And the four hundred dollars hasn’t got to be 
paid back?” 

“No-o.” 

“Well then! why not happiness instead of woe- 
begoneness?” cried the girl. “I am delighted. 
Only, Mother mine, I wish you had told me this 
long, long ago.” 


MISS FREYLINGHAUSEN 279 

“Why— dear ” 

“I should have felt so much happier,” declared 
Beth. “So very much happier.” 

Another thing happened that day besides Mrs. 
Euphemia Haven’s reception. Beth received a 
letter from Madam Hammersly. The madam 
wrote rather a queer letter, containing this im- 
portant question : 

“Is Cynthia Fogg with you in your town? I 
have received from her a Christmas present — ex- 
pressed direct from Hudsonvale — a very beautiful 
lavaliere that could not have cost less than ten 
pounds.” Madam Hammersly steadfastly refused 
to think in anything but English money. 

It was plain to be seen that Madam Hammersly 
feared her one-time parlor maid had become pos- 
sessed of the valuable trinket dishonestly. 

“What do you suppose that can mean?” Beth 
asked her mother; but, of course, Mrs. Baldwin 
was quite as ignorant as Beth herself of the where- 
abouts of Cynthia Fogg. 

Beth wondered if she ought to make a house-to- 
house canvass of Hudsonvale for the elusive Cyn- 
thia. And if the girl was in the village, why had 
she not been to the cottage on Bemis Street? Cyn- 
thia knew Beth’s address. 

Beth went to the Haven house that evening with 
several interesting matters in her busy mind — and 


iSo GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


she went again in a taxicab. Marcus paid for it 
out of his own pocket. He rode along with her, 
‘‘so as to get his money’s worth,” he said. 

To tell the truth, Beth was rather disappointed 
when she found it was not merely an evening dance 
— for she “adored balls,” so she said. The larger 
dancing floor at Mrs. Haven’s was littered with 
chairs and benches, and, at first, when the guests 
came down from the dressing rooms, they were 
officiously herded into the rows of seats by ushers. 

Mrs. Haven addressed her guests in her very 
best platform style. Larry’s mother was president 
of two clubs, vice-president of another, and prin- 
cipal speaker at most of their meetings. So she 
had pat the public speaker’s manner. 

“I have brought you together this evening, dear 
friends, to be first entertained in a rather novel 
way. Afterward we shall have dancing. I met not 
long ago a very bright young lady from Philadel- 
phia, who interested me very much in a subject now 
coming largely before the public, and I felt the 
wish to have her come here to talk to us of Hud- 
sonvale, who may be helped by her experience. 

“The question of domestic service has of late 
years become of graVe importance. This brave 
young lady — whose name you will all recognize, 
and whose social position you all know — had the 


MISS FREYLINGHAUSEN 281 


temerity to go forth and gain information at first 
hand regarding the real conditions of such service, 
and of the characters of the girls who enter into 
domestic service. I take great pleasure in intro- 
ducing to you, ladies and gentlemen. Miss C. Erne- 
line Freylinghausen, of Philadelphia, my guest for 
the holidays.” 

A lithe girl, in a perfect evening gown, her hair 
piled high on her head, a plentiful sprinkle of 
freckles across the bridge of her nose, and won- 
derfully compelling blue eyes, stepped forward 
and bowed. When she began to speak it was a 
pleasure to listen to her — whether or not one be- 
lieved in her theories or cared about her subject. 

Beth was seated far from the speaker and to 
one side. Was it ? Could it be ? 

Beth heard the speaker’s tongue arraign mis- 
tresses who ill-treated their servants or were care- 
less of their comfort. Her biting sarcasm was 
just what one would expect from Cynthia Fogg’s 
lips. 

But, Miss Freylinghausen, of Philadelphia, the 
heiress to millions, to houses and lands ; and Cyn- 
thia Fogg, of whose green hat with the purple 
feather which Molly had knocked overboard from 
the Water Wagtail, Beth still retained a very vivid 
memory 


282 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 


“Why, it is impossible I” gasped Beth, aloud, 
and forgot to applaud when the little, earnest talk 
was over. She sat in her seat, unable to rise, or 
even think connectedly, when the talk had ended. 

Suddenly, the charming figure came down from 
the dais and seized Beth in her arms. 

“Well, Chicken Little! who told you the sky 
had fallen?” demanded Miss C. Emeline Freyling- 
hausen, shaking Beth, playfully. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


THE “perfect number” IN AUNTS 

Beth had something really wonderful to tell 
Molly Granger when the winter vacation was over 
and she met that young lady on the train bound 
for Rivercliff School. 

And Molly listened in as rapt amazement as 
Beth had experienced when she listened to the pub- 
lic talk of “Miss Cynthia Emeline Fogg Freyling- 
hausen,” as Molly ever after insisted upon calling 
their mysterious friend. 

“And cracky-me!” giggled Molly. “If only 
Maude Grimshaw could know this ! She was such 
a close personal friend of the heiress of the Frey- 
linghausen millions. Oh, my aunt ! as Cynthia her- 
self would say. In my case — oh, my seven aunts I 
And Bethesda ! They are all coming to our gradu- 
ation.” 

“Who are?” demanded the surprised, not to ^ay 
startled, Beth. Molly did jump about so from one 
subject to another. 

“My aunts. They htive promised. Yea, verily, 
they have threatened. Do you suppose, if I tell 
283 


284 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Miss Hammersly they are coming, that she will 
feel it necessary to limit us all to fewer friends on 
graduation day?” 

But that fondly-looked-forward-to day still 
seemed a long, long way ahead to Beth and her 
class at Rivercliff School. First, much chatter and 
wonder had to be expressed over the discovery 
that Cynthia Fogg was a “millionairess” — Mol- 
ly’s designation, of course. 

Madam Hammersly was really the most 
amazed person who ever wore a cap. She ex- 
claimed to Beth once : 

“Miss Baldwin, to think of my scolding that 
young lady so — and actually discharging her for 
incompetence !” 

“But she was incompetent, wasn’t she?” laughed 
Beth. “Whatever Cynthia learned about the 
theory of domestic service, she certainly did not 
learn much about the actual practice thereof.” 

“But — Miss Freylinghau'sen !” murmured the 
good lady, who had all the middle-class English- 
woman’s awe for riches and position. 

Cynthia, at Mrs. Haven’s party, had been quite 
confidential with Beth. The latter learned that 
Cynthia had by no means started out with the in- 
tention of informing herself concerning the theory 
of domestic service. She was merely an idle, dis- 
appointed, rich girl, disgusted with her life. 


“PERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 285 

She had actually run away from home — not 
from an institution — when the chums met her on 
the Water Wagtail. She was not then of age, and 
she had a guardian who had insisted on her going 
to Europe with his wife and daughters. It was 
he whom Cynthia (as Beth and Molly continued 
to call her) feared would follow her. 

To hide her escapade the guardian announced 
that she had gone to Europe. Meanwhile, Cyn- 
thia was bothering the good madam at Rivercliff 
School. 

“The dear thing!” she told Beth. “I shall al- 
ways love and pity her, for I did make her so much 
trouble!” 

“But my dear Miss Freylinghausen !” gasped 
Mrs. Haven, who was listening frankly to all this. 
“You do not mean to say that you were at that 
school with Beth?” 

“Not in the literary department — in the domes- 
tic department,” laughed Cynthia. “Beth was 
really instrumental in getting me the job. And at 
that I could not keep it. I couldn’t suit Madam 
Hammersly — and I really tried, too. But Beth 
suited her. Beth showed herself to be the ‘better 
man of us two.’ ” 

Miss Freylinghausen’s evident liking for Beth^ — 
her admiration for her, in fact — made its impres- 
sion upon Mrs. Haven. 


286 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

That lady’s eyes were often fixed upon the bril- 
liant beauty of her old friend’s daughter during 
the remainder of the evening — and with a new ex- 
pression in her own countenance. 

But all this was “ancient history” now. Back 
at Rivercliff, Beth Baldwin had altogether too 
much of really vital importance to think of to be 
bothered by reflections upon either Larry’s mother 
or Larry himself. 

As she had feared, the girl from Hudsonvale 
returned to school to face pronounced opposition 
in her own class. It did not so much matter about 
the dislike expressed by girls in the lower grades; 
but it was in the power of Laura Hedden, Miss 
Rice, and a few others of the seniors, to make 
Beth’s existence very unhappy indeed. 

And the worst of it was, it did not seem to be 
a situation that Beth could control. She could 
not take affairs into her own hands, as she had 
on that long past occasion of the Red Masque. 
She could not withdraw herself now from the re- 
mainder of her class. Being its president, and a 
leader in all its activities, it would have been be- 
neath her even to notice many of the slights and 
insults aimed at her. The sting of them was quite 
as sharp, however. This situation was harder 
to endure than any of Maude Grimshaw’s old-time 
persecutions. 


‘TERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 287 

At every business meeting of the senior class 
(and these became frequent as time went on), the 
schism against Beth was shown to be stronger. It 
did not do for her to propose the simplest thing; 
at once some girl jumped up with an objection or 
a counter-proposal. 

“Why,” said the usually jolly Molly, quite ser- 
iously now, “I believe if we had to discuss right 
now whether ‘two and two make four,’ Hedden 
or Rice or somebody, would jump up and claim it 
didn’t. What’s the matter with you all, anyway?” 

“Well, you’re not going to have everything all 
your own way, Molly Granger, so there !” said one 
of the obstructionists. 

“No,” said another. “Too many things have 
been cut and dried for us. We want to have some- 
thing to say about what the senior class does.” 

“Who’s we?” demanded Molly, warmly. 

“Point of order!” drawled one girl. “Has 
Miss Granger been called to the chair, pro temf^ 

Beth began heartily to wish that Molly was 
chairman at these disorderly meetings — or some- 
body besides herself. When the opposition could 
not gain its point, very often the quarrelsome girls 
were so noisy that the session adjourned without 
having accomplished the object for which it had 
been called. 

Of course, her inability to control the meet- 


288 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

ings counted against Beth. Reports of them cir- 
culated through the school and quickly reached the 
ears of the teachers. Miss Hammersly would be 
the last to know about the friction in the senior 
class; but she must know in time, and she would 
then call the class president to account. 

Long as the time seemed to June, the days 
passed only too swiftly. The senior class of Riv- 
ercliff considered itself, of course, quite a wonder- 
ful body of young ladies. And Miss Hammersly 
did all in her power to inspire them with the belief 
that the whole world lay open before them to be 
conquered. 

Beth kept busily at work with both her books 
and her needle. She was piling up quite a little 
sum of money — there was a new object in view, 

Mr. Baldwin was doing very well with one of 
his inventions, and a second one promised to make 
both him and Larry Haven moderately wealthy. 
The family was not likely to need her financial aid 
after all. When she began to teach, her salary 
would be her own. 

And now that she had so much money saved, 
Beth wished to try to recover Great-grandmother 
Lomis’ corals. She had learned from her mother 
who had the heirloom; she was sure Mrs. Haven 
never wore the corals; she desired very much to 
buy them back from Larry’s mother. 


“PERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 289 

For, after all^ Beth was a real girl and loved 
jewelry and the like just as much as any other 
girl. 

This hope, however, was not the first thought in 
her mind. She neglected none of her senior class 
tasks for the sake of earning more money. She 
had even passed a good deal of her work over to 
another girl in a lower class, who needed to help 
herself through school. The doctrine of inde- 
pendence was beginning to be established at River- 
cliff School in spite of such girls as Laura Heddon. 

Social affairs were always of more importance 
to the senior class than to any of the other girls. 
The members of the senior class being really the 
hostesses at the monthly “hop,” considerable time 
and thought had to be given by the social commit- 
tee to these occasions. 

Beth, as class president, was chairman of this 
social committee; but she saw so much opposition 
arrayed against her that she feared the good times 
of the other girls would be spoiled if she did not 
withdraw. Her act in doing this — with the ex- 
cuse that she was too busy to fulfil the duties at- 
tached to the chairmanship — did not please either 
her own friends or the opposition. 

“Say I what do you do that for?” Molly 
Granger demanded. “Want to ‘crab the film?’ 
We need you to suggest ideas — and carry ’em out. 


290 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

too. Now, you just see I The hop this week will 
be a fizzle.” 

‘‘Oh, be an optimist, honey,” Beth said, laugh- 
ing. “Look on the bright side.” 

“That’s all right. I know how to be an opti- 
mist,” Molly returned, though still resentfully. 
“It’s like the old fellow with the two teeth.” 

“Who was he?” asked her chum. 

“Why, this poor old chap could only eat the 
plainest kind of food, and couldn’t read anything, 
or play anything, or make anything. Just the 
same he seemed pretty cheerful and thought this 
world a pretty fine place to live in. 

“ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’m goin’ on eighty-two. I’ve 
been bald-headed thi;rty years, a widower for 
twenty-five, had indigestion nearly all my life, can’t 
hear unless folks holler at me, can’t see to read, 
ain’t reliable on my feet any more, and I’ve only 
got two teeth left — but, thank God, they hit 1’ 

“That’s an optimist,” concluded jolly Molly. 
“But there’s nothing very optimistic in the out- 
look for our evening parties if you back out, 
Bethesda. I can’t see what you are thinking of.” 

Beth dared not tell her chum just what she 
really was thinking of. It seemed to Beth Bald- 
win that the only way to stop friction in the sen- 
ior class was for her to resign as class president. 

Larry Haven seemed to have considerable busi- 


“PERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 291 

ness to see to for his clients at Jackson City or in 
the vicinity that spring. And he came frequently 
to Rivercliff to call. On the other hand, Mr. Rol- 
and Severn was quite a favorite with Miss 
Granger. One or the other, sometimes both, were 
at the senior receptions all those last months of 
Beth and Molly’s stay at Rivercliff. 

On the very evening to which Molly looked 
forward so apprehensively, both Larry and Ro- 
land Severn appeared as guests of the senior class. 
Beth had considered retiring to Number Eighty 
after supper and not coming down for the party 
at all; but she was glad she had not done this 
when she saw the boys. Larry would have been 
sure to make inquiries and that would have called 
attention to the trouble in the senior class. 

That the opposition to Beth as president was 
really increasing, was plain to all the observant 
girls. If Beth chanced to pass certain groups the 
laughter and chatter ceased instantly. At other 
times scornful glances and sharp speeches were 
flung at the class president. 

With two such gallants as Larry and Roland 
’( for both hovered about Beth and Molly) , neither 
of the girl chums could feel neglected. Indeed, 
jolly Molly would not have been neglected in any 
case, for she was popular with almost everybody, 
despite her partizanship in Beth’s cause. 


292 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

If there were any boys at these parties at all, 
they were sure to give Molly Granger plenty of 
attention. Her tongue was the smartest of all 
her class — and she could say funny and bright 
things without putting any sting into them. 

Some of the other seniors were popular with 
the visitors, too; but not all. Miss Rice, for in- 
stance, although one of the best dressed girls in 
the school, was almost sure to be a wallflower. 
She danced now and then with some other girl; 
the remainder of the time she either sat alone, or 
joined some equally neglected group. 

That is, unless Larry Haven or Roland Severn 
asked for the honor of being her partner. Al- 
ways, if they were present, these young men each 
danced with Miss Rice at least once. There were, 
likewise, other wallflowers with whom these two 
danced. 

Though a good skater. Miss Rice was not a 
good dancer. And she possessed no flow of small 
talk and few of the graces that are supposed to 
attract young men. Besides, she was downright 
homely. 

Nevertheless, Miss Rice had a bright mind — 
too bright to believe, for a moment, that her own 
personal attractions caused the two young men to 
put themselves out solely for her pleasure. 

Of course, as Miss Hammersly would not have 


“PERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 293 


allowed any of her girls to dance continually with 
the same partners, Larry and Roland could not 
hover about Beth and Molly all the evening. But 
they could easily have found more attractive girls 
than the ones they often selected when Beth and 
Molly were dancing with other partners. 

On this particular evening Miss Rice retired to 
Madam Hammersly’s room to repair a small tear 
in the lace of her skirt. The door was not closed; 
but there was a heavy portiere between the room 
and the hall and anybody outside would not have 
guessed the girl’s nearness. 

“Well, Severn, old boy, have you done your 
duty among the ‘overlooked ladies’ this evening?” 
asked a masculine voice. 

“I should hope so,” was Roland’s reply. “And 
twice with Miss Rice.” 

“You’ve nothing on me there,” said Larry 
Haven. “I shouldn’t want to displease Beth, but 
sometimes it’s a bore to dance with these wall- 
flowers.” 

“Now you’ve said it!” young Severn agreed, 
with feeling. 

“But Beth says I can’t come at all to these ‘shin- 
digs’ if I don’t help give the unpopular girls a good 
time. And she picks the ones I must dance with, 
too,” and Larry chuckled rather ruefully. 

“She said as much to me,” Roland Severn ac- 


294 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

knowledged. “She’s an awfully thoughtful, kind- 
hearted girl.” 

“She’s a dear,” agreed Larry, warmly. “Beth 
was always just the best ever. Thinks about oth- 
ers more than she does of herself.” 

The two young men walked away. Miss Rice 
remained in the semi-darkness of the madam’s 
room for some time — long enough to feel that her 
cheeks were cool again and that the tears were 
gone from her eyes. 

The thoughtless words of the two careless 
young men served an unexpected purpose. For 
once good grew from evil — sweet from the bitter. 
Ill-tempered as Miss Rice had shown herself to 
be, she was not shallow like Laura Hedden and 
some of the others who were opposed to Beth 
Baldwin in school affairs. 

She saw at once that Beth, without suspecting 
that Miss Rice or the other wallflowers would ever 
know about it, had used her influence with the two 
most popular young men attending the school 
dances to insure the neglected members of the sen- 
ior class the pleasure of having male partners. 

Of course, as a member of the social committee, 
it had been Beth’s duty to see that all were made 
happy if possible; but Miss Rice well knew that 
it was something besides duty that had suggested 
to the class president this particular way of aiding 


“PERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 295 

in the pleasure of the social occasion for all in the 
senior class. 

To girls in general, and of the age of Beth’s 
classmates, the attentions of young men are as 
pleasing and satisfactory as anything in life. It 
gives even an awkward girl more confidence in her- 
self to be singled out as a dancing partner by 
- young men. 

The chums, however, really had little time for 
“boys,” as Molly scofEngly called them. “Too 
much to do. And seven aunts to see me duck from 
under the scholastic yoke,” added the jolly one. 

Miss Rice’s discovery, made as she mended her 
torn lace in the madam’s room, bore fruit. She 
was really a serious-minded girl. 

She could recall now many thoughtful and help- 
ful things Beth Baldwin had proposed for the 
good of the senior class. Many of these sugges- 
tions Miss Rice, herself, and the Laura Hedden 
crowd had opposed with both vigor and venom. 

In fully a dozen cases the awakened girl had to 
admit that Beth Baldwin’s plans had proved wise. 
Her withdrawal now from the chairmanship of 
the social committee was likely to be a real catas- 
trophe. 

After all. Miss Rice was loyal to Rivercliff ; and 
she believed that others of the obstructionists 
were, too. Was their opposition to the will of the 


296 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

majority of the senior class — and especially to 
Beth Baldwin — going to be of any good in the 
end? 

“Even if we make her resign the presidency,” 
she told some of her confidants the day following 
the evening party, “it will create a terrible row. 
And Miss Hammersly will be just as hurt as she 
can be.” 

“Let her be !” snapped one of Laura Hedden’s 
particular friends. “What business has she to let 
a pauper come to Rivercliff, anyway?” 

“Now, that’s all nonsense, and we know it,” 
said Miss Rice, boldly. “In the first place, it’s 
been awfully handy to have a girl like Beth Bald- 
win here to do mending and sewing and the like, 
for us lazy ones. I don’t like the girl, that’s all.” 

“Then what are you fussing about her for?” 
demanded another of the party. 

“Because I see we’re fighting the best interests 
of the class and the school. And for another 
thing,” added Miss Rice, turning a fiery red. 

“What’s that?” was the general cry. 

“Well — just because Beth Baldwin is a whole 
lot more decent and forgiving than I would ever 
be if I were in her place,” blurted out Miss Rice. 
“What do you think?” 

Heatedly and baldly, she told of the discovery 
she had made the evening before. It was not an 


“PERFECT NUMBER’’ IN AUNTS 297 

easy thing for a girl to confess — that she was un- 
attractive, a veritable wallflower. And some of 
these very girls she talked to were in that same 
class. But having spurred her courage up, Miss 
Rice went through with her confession. 

“And that’s the sort of girl Baldwin is,” she 
concluded, rather breathlessly. “I know I 
shouldn’t have done it. I’m pretty sure there isn’t 
a girl here who would have so secretly heaped 
coals of fire on her enemy’s head. 

“Come, now I let us be honest — let us be fair. 
I don’t like poverty-stricken girls, or girls who 
come to Rivercliff as Beth Baldwin did, any bet- 
ter than heretofore. But she has beaten me. I 
don’t mean only in that skating race. She has 
beaten me in being decent! 

“I admit that Miss Hammersly seems to favor 
her, and the teachers are always boosting Bald- 
win. But I guess there is good reason for their 
doing so. I have been acting the dog-in-the-man- 
ger part. Never again; I’m going to bury the 
hatchet right here and now.” 

“Bury the hammer, I guess you mean. Rice,” 
giggled one of her hearers, nervously. 

“All right. I’m going to stop knocking. Just 
as sure as you live, as Molly Granger says, ‘every 
knock is a boost.’ We might as well stop fighting 
Beth Baldwin.” 


298 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

Of course, they did not all agree with the girl 
whose conscience had been awakened. Laura 
Hedden was by no means of the same type as Miss 
Rice. Laura managed to hold some of the oppo- 
sition together. 

But before the month rolled around and the 
date of another of the school parties approached, 
a paper was circulated in the senior class for sig- 
natures, asking Beth Baldwin to reconsider her 
resignation from the chairmanship of the social 
committee. The first signature on the paper was 
that of Miss Rice, followed by the names of sev- 
eral of the former “party of the opposition.” 

“So, ‘all’s well that ends well,’ ” quoted jolly 
Molly Granger, happily. “You’ve just got to get 
back into harness, Bethesda. The ranks of the 
enemy are broken. It just proves what I’ve al- 
ways said, my dear: You are the most popular girl 
who ever came to school here at Rivercliff.” 

“I wonder!” murmured Beth. 

“You wonder what?” questioned her chum. 

“I wonder how Rice came to change so.” 

But unless Beth Baldwin chances to read this 
narrative of Rivercliff School, she is likely never 
to be enlightened regarding this particular mys- 
tery. And at this time there was so much else of 
moment going on that she had little leisure to give 
to it. 


“PERFECT NUMBER” IN AUNTS 299 

The days were being counted at last. Such a 
fluttering in the dove-cote as graduation drew 
nigh! Dresses to try on, last examinations to 
take, trips to the milliner and shoe stores, theses 
to write, conditions to make up, letters to write to 
friends and relatives, enclosing tickets to the for- 
mal exercises and invitations to the various recep- 
tions and teas. 

“Seven tickets to Hambro,” groaned Molly. “I 
tried to get Miss Hammersly to have a booth, or 
private box, built for my aunts. But what do you 
suppose she said to me, girls?” groaned Molly. 

“What did she say?” was the response. 

“ ‘Do you suppose you are the only person who 
has aunts. Miss Granger?’ ” 

“Never mind, my dear,” said Stella. “Perhaps 
all of them won’t come to the exercises.” 

“Not all come?” cried Molly. “That would be 
awful. Seven is the perfect number in aunts. I 
could not spare one of the dears. Why, if Aunt 
Celia, Aunt Catherine, Auntie Cora, Aunt Carrie, 
Aunt Charlotte, Aunt Cassie and Aunt Cyril did 
not appear at Rivercliff to see me graduate, I — 

I Well! I should not feel as though I were 

graduated, that’s all !” 

All this only a day or two before the great oc- 
casion. Beth was taking home to one of her best 
customers the last piece of work she would do at 


300 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

RiverclH School. As she crossed the Boulevard 
she was suddenly conscious of an old fashioned 
family equipage, a pair of fat bay horses, a fat 
footman and a fatter coachman, which drew across 
her line of vision and stopped. And there was a 
fat brown hand, on which sparkled several dia- 
monds, waving to her from the carriage window. 

It was Mrs. Ricardo Severn. She beckoned 
Beth to come near. 


CHAPTER XXX 


VOCATIONAL 

“My dear child I How well you are looking T* 
drawled Mrs. Severn, just as though she had seen 
Beth only the week before and that their inter- 
course had been quite calm and placid. 

Beth did not know just what to say; so, as Ella 
would have remarked, “she said it with a ven- 
geance I” She stood perfectly still. 

“My nephew, Roland, keeps me posted regard- 
ing you, my dear,” continued the lady. 

“Ah — indeed ? I have not seen Mr. Severn for 
a fortnight, I believe,” said Beth, feeling vastly 
uncomfortable. 

“Oh, my dear I Then you haven’t heard the 
news,” cried Mrs. Severn. 

“What news ?” asked Beth. 

“About poor Mr. Montague. About my poor 
parrot,” said the lady. 

“I have heard nothing about the parrot — no,” 
admitted Beth. 

“Why, we took up that heavy carpet in my room 
ten days ago and what do you think?” 

301 


302 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

“Oh, Mrs. Severn!” exclaimed Beth, suddenly 
interested and excited. “Did you find ?” 

“Ever so many things I had missed — yes,” said 
the lady, complacently. “The poor dear had been 
taking and hiding things under the edge of the car- 
pet, along the mopboard under the windows. That 
sunburst of mine was found right under the bay 
window. Wasn’t that funny?” 

Beth thought of the grief and shame the loss of 
the sunburst had caused her, and she could not, 
for the life of her, extract an iota of humor from 
the fact. 

“But that was just like the wretched creature,” 
went on Mrs. Severn. “Will you believe it? That 
parrot had deceived me for years and years. Quite 
twenty years I have owned him. But now I have 
sent him away for good.” 

And the selfish old woman drove away, leaving 
Beth something to be thankful for, but feeling that 
Mrs. Ricardo Severn was a very unfeeling person. 

The graduation of Beth and her classmates was 
really a very pretty occasion ; Miss Hammersly de- 
clared (as usual) that no finer class of girls had 
ever left her rooftree. 

Rivercliff was crowded on that day, and the 
great central room of the gymnasium was used 
for the dance and reception at night. Of course, 
everybody was present — including the perfect num- 


VOCATIONAL 


303 

ber in aunts. Likewise, Mrs. Baldwin came as the 
guest of Mrs. Haven. 

Really, to see and hear Mrs. Haven one might 
have thought that “our Beth” was her daughter 
instead of Priscilla Baldwin’s oldest child. 

“And do you remember, Priscilla,” said Larry’s 
mother, wiping her eyes when the blue-ribboned di- 
plomas were given out, “how we planned, years 
and years ago, that my Larry and your eldest girl 
should marry?” 

“That was a long time ago,” said Mrs. Bald- 
win, rather primly. 

“But they do make a wonderfully good looking 
couple together,” whispered Mrs. Haven a little 
later, when Larry stood with a group of the girls, 
which included another of the graduation day 
guests — Miss Freylinghausen. Cynthia had one 
arm around Beth and another around Molly, and 
looked to be enjoying herself. 

Before the dancing began that evening, Larry 
sent up word to Number Eighty where Beth had 
served tea, to ask that the occupant of that room 
would give him a few moments of her time. And 
Beth tripped down in her new evening frock in 
answer to the summons. Evidently, Larry had 
laid his plans with wit and judgment. He led hejfc 
into the madam’s room — and it was empty. 

“See what I have for you to-night, Beth,” he 


304 GIRLS OF RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

said, eyeing her laughingly, yet admiringly. He 
opened the box he carried and displayed its con- 
tents. 

“With the compliments and love,” he said, his 
voice shaking a little, “of Mrs. Euphemia Haven 
— God bless her ! Your Great-grandmother’s cor- 
als, Beth. They are to be yours again. She never 
intended to keep them for herself, but wants you 
to have them back now to wear — and for your 
very own.” 

Beth looked at him — looked away — tried to 
say something, and Larry added, softly: 

“You can’t refuse them, Beth — you can’t. You 
would quite break the Mater’s heart, dear — and 
mine !” 

“How long are you really going to teach school, 
Beth?” demanded Ella some weeks later, after 
Beth had been to the State capital and passed her 
examination before the school board. 

“Two years at least, my dear.” 

“My goodness ! do you suppose Larry will ever 
wait that long?” 

“Larry will have to wait, my dear,” said the 
elder sister, firmly. Then her eyes suddenly spark- 
led. “He must wait, at least, until he can accom- 
plish one particular thing.” 

“What is that?” the flyaway sister demanded. 


VOCATIONAL 


305 

“Until he can afford to pay the cook’s wages 
out of his earnings as a dimb o’ the law.’ ” 

It was about this time, too, in the lazy summer 
following Beth’s graduation that she received a 
letter from Molly Granger, in which was the fol- 
lowing : 

“So he agrees we are to wait till Captain John 
comes home to marry Aunt Carrie, and then we 
shall have a double wedding. At least two of ‘the 
Granger girls’ will not die old maids. 

“I am awfully glad, Beth Baldwin, that you 
went to work for Mrs. Ricardo Severn. Other- 
wise, I am quite sure that I would never expect 
soon to sign myself, ‘Mrs. Roland Severn, nee 
J. Molly Granger, no longer F. W.’ ” 

“What’s the good, I want to know,” srdd Mar- 
cus Baldwin, one night, evidently having thought 
hard and long upon the problem, “for you girls to 
go in for the highbrow ed. and then get married 
right smack off?” 

“Not marrying ‘right smack off I’ ” denied Ella, 
vigorously. “Our Beth is going to teach at least 
two years.” 

“Well, that jolly girl isn’t.” 

“She’s going to teach after she is married, and 
so is Mr. Severn,” laughed Beth, “unless Mrs. Ri- 


3o6 girls of RIVERCLIFF SCHOOL 

cardo Severn remembers him very liberally in- 
deed.” 

“Well, a whole lot of you higher-ed. girls do 
marry right off,” repeated Marcus. 

“And why not? We’re better fitted for life, no 
matter what it brings to us, if we have had a good 
education. Oh,” declared Beth, now quite grown 
up, “I am not sorry that I fulfilled my resolve.” 


SOMETHING ABOUT 

AMY BELL MARLOWE 

AND HER BOOKS FOR GIRLS 

In these days, when the printing presses are 
turning out so many books for girls that are good, 
bad and indifferent, it is refreshing to come upon 
the works of such a gifted authoress as Miss Amy 
Bell Marlowe, who is now under contract to write 
exclusively for Messrs. Grosset & Dunlap. 

In many ways Miss Marlowe’s books may be 
compared with those of Miss Alcott and Mrs. 
Meade, but all are thoroughly modern and wholly 
American in scene and action. Her plots, while 
never improbable, are exceedingly clever, and her 
girlish characters are as natural as they are inter- 
esting. 

On the following pages will be found a list 
of Miss Marlowe’s books. Every girl in our 
land ought to read these fresh and wholesome 
tales. They are to be found at all booksellers. 
Each volume is handsomely illustrated and bound 
in cloth, stamped in colors. Published by Grosset 
& Dunlap, New York. A free catalogue of Miss 
Marlowe’s books may be had for the asking. 


THE OLDEST OF FOUR 


“ I DON^T see any way out ! ” 

It was Natalie’s mother who said that, after 
the awful news had been received that Mr. Ray- 
mond had been lost in a shipwreck on the Atlantic. 
Natalie was the oldest of four children, and the 
family was left with but scant means for support. 

“ I’ve got to do something — yes. I’ve just got 
to! ” Natalie said to herself, and what the brave 
girl did is well related in “The Oldest of Four; 
Or, Natalie’s Way Out.” In this volume we 
find Natalie with a strong desire to become a 
writer. At first she contributes to a local paper, 
but soon she aspires to larger things, and comes 
in contact with the editor of a popular magazine. 
This man becomes her warm friend, and not only 
aids her in a literary way but also helps in a hunt 
for the missing Mr. Raymond. 

Natalie has many ups and downs, and has to 
face more than one bitter disappointment. But 
she is a plucky girl through and through. 

“ One of the brightest girls’ stories ever 
penned,” one well-known author has said of this 
book, and we agree with him. Natalie is a 
thoroughly lovable character, and one long to be 
remembered. Published as are all the Amy Bell 
Marlowe books, by Grosset & Dunlap, New 
York, and for sale by all booksellers. Ask your 
dealer to let you look the volume over. 


THE GIRLS OF HILLCREST FARM 


“ WeTl go to the old farm, and we’ll take 
boarders! We can fix the old place up, and, 
maybe, make money!” 

The father of the two girls was broken down 
in health and a physician had recommended that 
he go to the country, where he could get plenty 
of fresh air and sunshine. An aunt owned an 
abandoned farm and she said the family could 
live on this and use the place as they pleased. 
It was great sport moving and getting settled, 
and the boarders offered one surprise after an- 
other. There was a mystery about the old farm, 
and a mystery concerning one of the boarders, 
and how the girls got to the bottom of affairs 
is told in detail in the story, which is called, “ The 
Girls of Hillcrest Farm; Or, The Secret of the 
Rocks.” 

It was great fun to move to the farm, and once 
the girls had the scare of their lives. And they 
attended a great “ vendue ” too. 

“ I just had to write that story — I couldn’t help 
it,” said Miss Marlowe, when she handed in the 
manuscript. “ I knew just such a farm when I 
was a little girl, and oh! what fun I had there! 
And there was a mystery about that place, too ! ” 

Published, like all the Marlowe books, by 
Grosset & Dunlap, New York, and for sale wher- 
ever good books are sold. 

3 


A LITTLE MISS NOBODY 


“ Oh, she’s only a little nobody ! Don’t have 
anything to do with her ! ” 

How often poor Nancy Nelson heard those 
words, and how they cut her to the heart. And 
the saying was true, she was a nobody. She had 
no folks, and she did not know where she had 
come from. All she did know was that she was 
at a boarding school and that a lawyer paid her 
tuition bills and gave her a mite of spending 
money. 

“ I am going to find out who I am, and where 
I came from,” said Nancy to herself, one day, 
and what she did, and how it all ended, is ab- 
sorbingly related in “A Little Miss Nobody; 
Or, With the Girls of Pinewood Hall.” Nancy 
made a warm friend of a poor office boy who 
worked for that lawyer, and this boy kept his 
eyes and ears open and learned many things. 

The book tells much about boarding school 
life, of study and fun mixed, and of a great race 
on skates. Nancy made some friends as well as 
enemies, and on more than one occasion proved 
that she was “ true blue ” in the best meaning 
of that term. 

Published by Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 
and for sale by booksellers everywhere. If you 
desire a catalogue of Amy Bell Marlowe books 
send to the publishers for it and it will come free. 

4 


THE GIRL FROM SUNSET RANCH 


Helen was very thoughtful as she rode along 
the trail from Sunset Ranch to the View. She 
had lost her father but a month before, and 
he had passed away with a stain on his name — 
a stain of many years’ standing, as the girl had just 
found out. 

“ I am going to New York and I am going to 
clear his name ! ” she resolved, and just then she 
saw a young man dashing along, close to the edge 
of a cliff. Over he went, and Helen, with no 
thought of the danger to herself, went to the 
rescue. 

Then the brave Western girl found herself set 
down at the Grand Central Terminal in New 
York City. She knew not which way to go or 
what to do. Her relatives, who thought she was 
poor and ignorant, had refused to even meet her. 
She had to fight her way along from the start, 
and how she did this, and won out, is well related 
in “The Girl from Sunset Ranch; Or, Alone in 
a Great City.” 

This is one of the finest of Amy Bell Marlowe’s 
books, with its true-to-life scenes of the plains 
and mountains, and of the great metropolis. 
Helen is a girl all readers will love from the 
start. 

Published by Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 
and for sale by booksellers everywhere. 

5 


WYN’S CAMPING DAYS 


“ Oh, girls, such news ! ” cried Wynifred Mal- 
lory to her chums, one day. “ We can go camp- 
ing on Lake Honotonka ! Isn’t it grand 1 ” 

It certainly was, and the members of the Go- 
Ahead Club were delighted. Soon they set off, 
with their boy friends to keep them company in 
another camp not far away. Those boys played 
numerous tricks on the girls, and the girls re- 
taliated, you^'^may be sure. And then Wyn did 
a strange girl a favor, and learned how some 
ancient statues of rare value had been lost in the 
lake, and how the girl’s father was accused of 
stealing them. 

“ We must do all we can for that girl,” said 
Wyn. But this was not so easy, for the girl 
campers had many troubles of their own. They 
had canoe races, and one of them fell overboard 
and came close to drowning, and then came a big 
storm, and a nearby tree was struck by lightning. 

“ I used to love to go camping when a girl, and 
I love to go yet,” said Miss Marlowe, in speaking 
of this tale, which is called, “ Wyn’s Camping 
Days; Or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club.” 
“ I think all girls ought to know the pleasures of 
summer life under canvas.” 

A book that ought to be in the hands of all 
girls. Issued by Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 
and for sale by booksellers everywhere. 

6 


THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL 
HIGH SERIES 

By GERTRUDE W. MORRISON 

12mo. CLOTH, ILLUSTRATED. PRICE PER VOLUME 40 CENTS, POSTPAID 


Here is a series full of the spirit of high school life of to- 
day. The girls are real flesh-and-blood characters, and we fol- 
low them with interest in school and out. There are many 
contested matches on track and field, and on the water, as well 
as doings in the classroom and on the school stage. There is 
plenty of fun and excitement, all clean, pure p.id wholesome. 


THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH 
Or Rivals for all Honors. 

A stirring tale of high school life, full of fun, with a touch 
of mystery and a strange initiation. 

THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON LAKE LUNA 
Or The Crew That Won. 

Telling of water sports and fun galore, and of fine times in camp. 

THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH AT BASKETBALL 
Or The Great Gymnasium Mystery. 

Here we have a number of thrilling contests at basketball and in 
addition, the solving of a mystery which had bothered the high 
school authorities for a long while. 

THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON THE STAGE 
Or The Play That Took the Prize. 

How the girls went in for theatricals and how one of them wrote 
a play which afterward was made over for the professional stage 
and brought in some much-needed money. 

THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH ON TRACK AND 
FIELD 

Or The Girl Champions of the School League 

This story takes in high school athletics in their most approved 
and up-to-date fashion. Full of fun and excitement. 

THE GIRLS OF CENTRAL HIGH IN CAMP 
Or The Old Professor’s Secret. 

The girls went camping on Acorn Island and had a delightful 
time at boating, swimming and picnic parties. 


Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York 


aw»-' 


THE OUTDOOR GIRLS SERIES 

By LAURA LEE HOPE 


AUTHOR or* THE EVER POPULAR "BCBBSEY TWINS BOOKS** 


12mo. CLCTH 5LICSTRATED PRiCE PER VOLUME 40 CENTS, POSTPAID 


These tales take in the various adventures participated mj 
ty several bright, up-to-date girls who love outdoor life. They 
are clean and wholesome, free from sensationalism, absorbing 
from the first chapter to the last. 

THE OUTDOOR GIRLS OF DEEPDALE 
Or Camping and Tramping for Fun and Health. 

Telling how the girls organized their Camping and Tramping Club, 
how they went cn a tour, and of various adventures which befell them. 

THE OUTDOOR oiRLS AT RAINBOW LAKE 
Or Stirring Cruise of the Motor Boat Gem. 

One of the "iris becomes the proud possessor of a motorboat and 
at once invites her club members to take a trip vdth her down the 
river to Rainbow Lake, a beautiful sheet of water lying between the 
mountains. 

THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A MOTOR CAR 
Or The Haunted Mansion of. Shadow Vaiiey. 

Onfe of the girls has learned to run a big motor car, and she invites 
the club to go on a tour with her, to visit some distant relatives. On 
the way they stop at a deserted mansion, said to be ha'an*c.d and make 
ft most surprising discovery. 

THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN A WINTER CAMP 
Or Glorious Days cn Skates and Ice Boats. 

In this storjs the scene is shifted to a winter season. The girls 
have some jolly times skating and ice boating, and visit a huntejs* 
camp in the big woods. 

THE OUTDOOR GIRLS IN FLORIDA 
Or Wintering in the Sunny South. 

The parents of one cf the girls have bought an orange grove It 
Florida, and her companions are invited to visit the place. They do 
so, and take a trip into the wilds of the interior, where several unusual 
things happeru 


Grosset & Dunlap, 526 West 26th St., New York 











